


The Difference a Day Makes

by RedGold



Category: Timeless (TV 2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Butterfly Effect, Depression, F/F, F/M, Found Family, Not Canon Compliant - s02e11-12 The Miracle of Christmas (Timeless), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovery, Rufus will do anything to save Jiya, Scary Flynn, Titanic mission, bathroom renovation, parallel story telling, passive suicidal thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-24
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-16 07:48:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 32
Words: 44,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28952979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedGold/pseuds/RedGold
Summary: An accident with the Lifeboat sends Rufus into an alternate universe where things are more dire than his own. But his desire to return could mean consequences he's not willing to face. This results in a compromise which will change everything... for better or worse is yet to be determined. Only Flynn, Lucy, and Lorena can decide.
Relationships: Garcia Flynn/Lorena Flynn, Garcia Flynn/Lucy Preston, Lorena Flynn & Lucy Preston
Comments: 199
Kudos: 42





	1. Chapter 1

**The Difference a Day Makes**

**Now**

The bunker was in absolute chaos.

The last anyone had seen of the Lifeboat was when they heard Rufus yelp and shout as the door rolled shut, sealing him inside, rings beginning to turn. Jiya and Connor tried to cancel the launch, but in the end, they could have killed Rufus in doing so, getting the Lifeboat stuck in a quasi-state. 

Everyone expected he would be right back, but that had been forty-six hours ago.

“Tell us again what you saw,” Christopher ordered Jiya as they were all standing around the console.

“I looked back and I saw Rufus getting out the Lifeboat that landed on some dark, rural-like road,” she obliged though with some annoyance as this was probably the sixth time she had gone through this. “He checked on a guy in a suit who swerved to avoid him. Seeing he was unharmed, Rufus got back in the Lifeboat immediately, and it launches.”

“Did you see a license plate?” the agent asked.

“Again, no.” Jiya was getting snappy, frustrated. “Wyatt and I went through cars, and I’m pretty sure it was a 1964 Chrysler Saratoga. Which means it was sometime after 1964.”

“It could be any time through yesterday,” Wyatt pointed out. “People still drive classics.”

“The dude’s suit was like, burnt orange,” Jiya added, “and he had Luke Skywalker hair, so I’m pretty sure it was the 70s. Thank goodness for a full moon otherwise I might not even seen that much.”

“Sure it was full?” Flynn asked as he leaned against the wall. “Could be at max waning or min waxing?”

“Dude, I don’t know,” Jiya threw her hands up.

“It could help,” Lucy said from behind her cup of coffee. “If we know it’s for sure a full moon, then with the rest of these details, we may be able to figure out exactly when and where Rufus landed.”

“But he’s not there anymore,” Connor told them. “If the Lifeboat was damaged by whatever happened to cause it to launch, Rufus could be… literally anywhere.”

“I’ve looked.” Jiya shook her head and the whole group was having flashbacks to Chinatown where they lost Rufus for a few hours. Though, at that time, they knew he was actually dead. They could form a plan to correct that, which they did.

The alarm went off, and they could feel the cackle of ions in the air. 

“He’s coming back!” Jiya said and rushed down from the console to the landing area. 

Everyone turned to watch for the Lifeboat to appear. Flynn continued to lean against the wall. He was relieved that Rufus was coming back, but he couldn’t shake a feeling that something was a bit… off.

There was a rush of wind and the Lifeboat blinked into existence. It didn’t look damaged or anything, which was a good start. Jiya immediately grabbed the ladder and rolled it over to the door. It took a long ten seconds, but it started to open. 

Rufus stuck his head out almost gingerly, as if he was expecting he might have to duck back in quickly. But he spotted Jiya and his eyes lit up. He bolted out of the machine and down the ladder, grabbing her and kissing her as if his life depended on it.

Everyone else shruggingly glanced at each other, waiting it out before questioning what happened.

“Jiya,” Rufus said as he cradled her head in his hands. Then he looked around, his eyes falling on everyone. “Connor, Wyatt, Lesser Scary Flynn.”

Flynn tilted his head at that moniker which, to be honest, he had actually heard before…

“Rufus,” Jiya said, avoiding another kiss. “What happened? Where have you been?”

“It’s a long story,” was his answer.

Lucy gasped, her hands flying to cover her mouth, the coffee cup left to fall to the floor. 

The group followed her line of sight to the top of the stairs where a young woman with mousey brown hair was exiting. Everyone had seen her photo, but only one of them had actually ever met her.

“Hey, Lucy,” Amy said with a smile, then started to walk down the steps.

Before anyone could express their confusion there was another surprise that stopped them all cold, another visitor exiting the Lifeboat. 

Flynn stood up straight from where he was leaning, whispering, “Lorena?”

His wife tried to smile at him, but it seemed like a near impossible task for her.

“Right, so,” Rufus nervous chuckled. “It’s a _really_ long story.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Forty-Six Hours Ago**

“I’m making coffee, you want some?” Jiya stuck her head through the Lifeboat hatch and asked.

“Why ask questions you know the answer to?” Rufus mumbled back, intent on his work.

“Maybe I just like to see you face?” 

Rufus chuckled, grinning to himself. He really hit the lottery, meeting Jiya. “Thanks, I’ll be out in a few, once I finish putting this back in.”

“Kay.” Jiya disappeared and left him to his work.

He was reconnecting a part of the hardware which controlled the stabilizers. The ride had gotten a little bumpy over the last few jumps and he honestly had no idea how old the components were. The upgraded Lifeboat had been left by future versions of Lucy and Wyatt to be used to rescue him from death. There was no telling how many trips it had gone through in the interim. 

As he put the last connector into place, a bolt of electricity discharged. He fell onto his rear with a yelp, swearing to himself that he grounded everything. But he heard the squeak of the hatch and the whole machine started to hum as the rings engaged.

“No, no no no!” Rufus hopped up into the pilot’s seat. He could have tried to get out but didn't want to risk getting himself squashed by the door. His hands danced along the screens, the system was working but not responding to input. 

The launch sequence wouldn’t abort and if he tried to just, power down, in the middle of it, then bad things would happen. He strapped himself in as he felt the Lifeboat lurch through space and time. Somewhere in the back of his mind it registered that the ride had indeed smoothed out.

There was a slight shudder as the Lifeboat stopped and began to power down and the whole system rebooted.

Rufus checked all the controls, everything seemed to be in working order, just restarting itself. The battery still showed as over 50% so he would be able to get back. If he had actually gone anywhere, he could still be in the bunker for all he knew. He checked the porthole and all he saw was mostly darkness. He could have blown the fuses, he’d be surprised if he didn’t actually.

He hit the release and the hatch began to roll open. Just by the smell alone he could tell he was no longer in the bunker. It was a wet, cut grass kind of smell, coupled with woody hints of farmland. He popped his head out and sure enough, by the light of the full moon, he could see the Lifeboat was sitting in the middle of a two-lane country road. He assumed it was two-lane, it didn’t have lane markers.

Movement caught his eye. Off to the left, a car was nose down in a ditch, the red taillights glowing ominously in the darkness. 

“Ah, crap,” Rufus mumbled to himself as he slid out of the machine. He could now smell the burned rubber from where the driver broke and skidded off the road at the Lifeboat’s likely sudden appearance.

He ran over to the car and it didn’t look as bad as he feared. There was no tree for it to have hit, just a small barbed-wire fence. The real issue was the soft mud that the front tires had sunk into. The driver was trying to open the door but it was blocked by the earth due to the angle. He could only open it a few inches before it too was stuck in the mud.

“Hey, I gotcha.” Rufus grabbed a knocked over fence post and started to dig a trench so the door would be able open wider.

The car looked like a classic, though he had no idea which one, that was Wyatt’s territory. The man finally stumbled out of the car, looking like he stepped out of an episode of _Starsky and Hutch_. 

“You okay?” Rufus asked the man who recoiled at Rufus trying to help him, giving Rufus that all too familiar look of ‘ew, a black man is trying to touch me.’ “You’re fine,” he decided with a sigh.

“What…” the man’s attention went to the Lifeboat sitting on the road. “What is that thing?”

“Just a car,” Rufus tried to say convincingly. “A big car.”

“That… is not a car,” the man was not convinced.

“You might have a concussion,” Rufus explained as he backed up the embankment. He could see headlights on the horizon, and the last thing he needed was more witnesses. “I’d get the next fella to take you to the hospital. Get a CT scan.”

“A… what?”

Rufus ran back to the Lifeboat and climbed in. Thankfully the computer had finished rebooting and everything was ready to go. He punched in the return coordinates, strapped in, and let the ship do its thing. Once again he felt the hum and lurch. The stabilizers were working properly again, so there was that at least.

He hit the hatch release and breathed in that wonderfully stale rusty air that told him he had made it back to the bunker. 

Someone pushed the ladder in front of the hatch and Rufus stepped out. “Man, that was weird, I know I grounded that whole system.”

“And here I thought you just went for a joyride,” a moderately familiar voice said. 

Rufus paused as he saw Dave “BamBam” Baumgardner standing at the bottom of the stairs. He was very surprised to see the other Delta Force agent, he thought Agent Christopher didn’t want to bring in anyone else. Though Rufus would be lying if he said he didn’t think they could use some more help.

“Oh, hey, BamBam,” Rufus smiled and walked down the steps.

“Rufus, I thought we were past that.” The man frowned at him, disappointedly. “Just call me Dave.”

“Ah, sure.” Rufus shrugged, looking around. Where was everyone?

As if in answer to his thoughts, Lucy came walking into the launch area. “Oh, good, you’re back,” she said. “Five more minutes and I would have gone into serious panic mode. Why did you jump?”

“Didn’t mean to,” he admitted. “I tripped something and ended up… somewhere. Ran a guy off the road.”

“You did what?” Dave asked.

“He should be fine, someone else was coming along,” Rufus assured him. “Too bad about the car though. I’m not sure what it was, Wyatt would know. I’ll ask him about it. I guess he’s in his room?”

It suddenly got very still and quiet between the soldier and the historian. 

“What?” 

“Rufus…” Lucy started out gingerly. “Wyatt’s… dead.”

He would think it a joke except it wasn’t something Lucy would joke about. “What, dead, how?”

She was giving him a strange look. “Flynn killed him.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Forty-Six Hours Ago**

“What? Flynn killed Wyatt?” Rufus did a mental double-take. “I was gone for like, fifteen minutes!”

“What?” Lucy was now the one double-taking. “Wyatt died two years ago. Internal bleeding from the explosion.”

“Explosion?” Rufus began to look around, really take in his surroundings. It was the bunker, but it wasn’t. Everything was there but it was all out of place, as if it had all been moved three inches to the left. His horrible sinking feeling seemed to know no depth. “Where’s Jiya?”

Lucy got really sad. “Where she’s been the last three months.”

Moments later, Rufus found himself in what used to be Flynn’s room, the closet having been turned into a medical unit. Jiya was laying on the bed, surrounded by white linens. She looked pale and gaunt, different tubes and wires snaking around her. 

Rufus dropped to his knees beside her, hand stuck in midair because if he touched then that meant this was real. But it was real. He could see the signs of his habitation of the room, holding constant vigils for his beloved.

“What happened?” he rasped out.

“She wanted to find a way to stop Rittenhouse,” Lucy told him quietly from the door, as if she was afraid to enter and intrude upon them. “Her powers were growing, and she was so determined. We told her to slow down but… she went into a trance, and hasn’t woken up since.”

“No, no, no.” Tears started to stream down his face as he finally touched hers, brushing away a few strands of hair. “She trained herself, in San Francisco, in the past.”

“We’ve never gone to San Francisco,” Lucy told him. “Rufus, what’s going on?”

It was clear, as obvious as the day is long, that this wasn’t his timeline. “I stepped on a butterfly.”

“A butterfly?” Lucy repeated. “You mean Edward Norton Lorenz’s chaos theory?”

“Commonly known at the Butterfly Effect,” he mumbled as he stood. “I need to talk to Connor, there has to be a way to fix this.”

“Ah, Rufus.” Lucy tried to say something, but he pushed past her into the hallway.

“It was either the driver or the person who stopped for them,” Rufus was talking to himself as he walked past Dave and down the hall to Connor’s room. “But how do I go back on myself without swiss cheese brain syndrome, and would that even work anyway.”

“Rufus!” Dave was hollering at him now.

“Connor!” Rufus banged on the door, but that was just a formality. He grabbed the handle and wrenched it open.

“What the hell, Rufus!” A woman shouted at him from where she was sitting with her laptop balanced on her knees.

He recognized her from her photo, as small as it may have been. “Holy Sith, she’s real.”

“Rufus!” Lucy grabbed his shoulder and spun him around. “Connor is dead too.”

“What?” His friend and mentor was dead too? This couldn’t be happening.

“He… he tried going to Rittenhouse, to be a literal Trojan Horse,” she told him, tears in her eyes. “It didn’t work, they shot him.”

“No, no, no, no.” Rufus rubbed the palms of his hands into his eyes as he tried to think, his body switching between anguish, fear, and rage. “This isn’t right. None of this is right. Connor and Wyatt should be alive. Amy shouldn’t even exist!”

“Excuse you?” Amy said from the doorway to what was her room now, not Connor’s.

“Think, think.” He was walking in circles, literally pounding his fist into his brain.

“What’s going on?” Amy asked her sister.

“I don’t think this is our Rufus,” she answered. 

“Soooo, should I take him out, or…?”

“Flynn!” Rufus shouted as he thought of something. “Flynn knows the journal inside and out. There may have been something in the journal about this, maybe a way to fix things.”

“Fix what?” Amy asked him loudly.

“Connor and Wyatt shouldn’t be dead,” he explained in short breathes. “Jiya should be awake, in control of her powers. And BamBam, you should be off somewhere on Delta Force missions, Delta Forcing it up.”

“What about Amy?” Lucy got defensive. “What did you mean by she shouldn’t exist?”

Rufus stalled on that one. He knew how hard Lucy had tried to get Amy back, and how devastated she was when she started to realize that maybe Emma really did prevent Amy from being born under any scenario. How could he tell that to this Lucy?

“I just need to talk to Flynn,” he said, avoiding the subject, but it was the truth. “The journal may have the key to all of this and then we can go from there. So which room is Flynn’s now?” He would have thought Flynn would have come to investigate the noise by now.

“Which room?” Dave nearly laughed. “Flynn is still in prison for stealing the Mothership and killing Wyatt.”

“Still in prison?” As much as Rufus had been against bringing in Flynn, in the end he realized the team needed all of them, working together. “Great, just great. Is there any way I can talk to him?” 

Lucy and Dave exchanged confused glances. Lucy saying, “What do you mean, _him_?”


	4. Chapter 4

**Forty-Six Hours Ago**

“Lorena Flynn?” Rufus said as he looked over the file. Clipped to the inside front of the folder was a headshot of the woman in her Army uniform. “I… I don’t remember him ever mentioning she was military.”

“Not just military, but a Sapper,” Dave pointed out.

Rufus gave him a sour look. “You say that like I should know what that means.”

“Sappers have a long historical tradition,” Lucy went into teacher mode and at least some things hadn’t changed in this timeline. “It comes from an old French word for spade, _sappe_. They started as men who assisted the canon artillery, digging ditches or creating mounds. They developed into engineers who got their military forces where they needed to be. This could mean building roads, ditches, bridges, or clearing land. They’re commonly depicted with shovels and axes as their primary tools.”

“They’re combat engineers,” Dave added when Lucy took a breath. “They do all that, but they also have extensive explosives training. They go through a modified Special Forces program. It’s brutal.”

“Very few women have completed the training,” Lucy continued, laced with annoyance. “Yet they were still deemed unable to fight until the ban on women in combat was lifted in 2015.”

This was all well and good information, but there was one detail in the file that stood out the most. “December 11th,” he said.

“That’s the day Rittenhouse attacked her home. What about it?” Lucy asked.

“I remember, in my timeline, it was the 10th.” Flynn got extra moody when it came around. So much so Rufus actually worried about the guy. 

“Rittenhouse attacked a day later?” Lucy grappled with that revelation. “And that meant she lived instead of her husband, which created this wildly different timeline?”

“Huh, yeah.” Rufus thought it over. “The difference a day makes.”

“Rufus,” Christopher called out. “We’re ready, let’s go.”

“I’ll come with you,” Lucy said and started to walk with Rufus.

“No, Lucy.” Christopher stopped her. “We’ve had this discussion. You are Rittenhouse’s number one target right now. And Rufus is our only pilot. I’m not going to split my resources trying to protect you both.”

“Flynn knows Rufus hates her guts for killing Wyatt,” Lucy argued back. “She may not talk to him. But she’ll talk to me.”

“If that’s the case, then we’ll set up another meeting.” Christopher made it clear that was the end of the argument. 

For his part, Rufus knew Lucy wasn’t wrong. If she had a similar relationship to Lorena Flynn as she had with her husband, then Lucy might just be the only person she would trust. But Rufus was the odd one out here. He needed to ask the questions, because he was the only one who really knew what to look for.

Over an hour later, Christopher was giving him do’s and don’ts as he stood outside of a meeting room in a high security women’s prison. “You feel threated, you just say the word and we’ll yank you out of there.”

“Sure.” Rufus wasn’t worried. Lorena Flynn couldn’t be any scarier than her husband, and he had pretty much gotten used to him.

Rufus walked into the small room big enough for a table and two chairs, knowing he would be watched through the two-way mirror and cameras. Lorena was sitting at the table, her light brown hair pulled back into a sloppy braid. Her hands were cuffed to the table.

He moved to sit across from her, and her eyes tracked his movements without moving her head. There was something menacing about it that he hadn’t expected. An aura of righteous rage permeated the room because she was in it. Rufus was beginning to doubt if he was actually prepared to deal with Garcia Flynn’s wife. 

“So, where do I start,” Rufus said nervously. Even on a good day what he was about to say would sound pretty ridiculous. “I’m just going to come out and say it. I come from a different timeline. I accidently went to the past, 1972 to be exact, and did something, I don’t know what yet, that led to a bunch of changes in the timeline.”

Lorena continued to stare at him, showing no emotion at those words. He could understand no lack of surprise, the women knew about time travel. But he would have thought the particulars would be interesting enough.

“Basically,” Rufus barreled through, “in my timeline, your home was attacked the night before. That resulted in you being the one to die, your husband lived.”

That sparked something in her eyes. “Iris?”

“I’m sorry.” He truly was. He might have disagreed with Flynn’s methods, and was still pissed at him for Anthony, but he understood the why. Seeing your five-year-old daughter murdered in front of you? That would mess up anyone.

The spark died out again. “What do you want, Carlin?”

“I’m trying to understand what went wrong,” he replied, trying not to sound as frustrated as he felt. “Wait, you aren’t going to doubt me?”

“I can see the truth in your eyes.” She tilted her head slightly and stared at him. “You don’t look at me like I murdered your friend. Though I maintain I gave him fair warning, there was only seconds left on the timer.”

“Oh, um.” He didn’t really know how to respond to that, so he carried on. “I was hoping that maybe the journal had said something, perhaps not directly, about this happening? Give me a clue as to why it did? What went wrong?”

She tilted her head more. “So you can change it back?”

“Ah, yes,” he admitted. “And I know what that means for you, that you would be dead, but, you have to believe me, my timeline is much better off. Connor and Wyatt are still alive. Jiya isn’t in a coma—oh, she’s in a coma by the way—and we really have Rittenhouse on the run. We’re starting to play offense against them.”

Lorena continued to stare at him blankly, monotony saying, “Wow. You’re really saying the world is better off without me.”

“No, I…” This was not at all going as he planned. “You were too good at what you were doing. You crippled the team too much. Made Rittenhouse really sit up and take things seriously early in the game. It put this timeline’s team at a disadvantage.”

“So now my husband is incompetent?” she sounded very indignant at that.

“Well, he never killed Wyatt, despite his best efforts,” Rufus blurted out.

A small smile appeared on her face and for the life of him he didn’t know how to interpret it.

“Look.” Rufus reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. He planned on using it to prove that he came from a different timeline. Now he wondered if it would hit a little differently. There was one particular photo he had in mind. He brought it up and sat the phone down in front of her cuffed hands.

She gingerly picked it up and stared at the photo.

“That was taken on Jiya’s birthday not too far back,” he explained.

Rufus didn’t have a lot of pictures of Flynn, why would he, but this one had been, well, something special. Flynn was standing with his arms crossed, smirking, rather pleased with himself in his burgundy turtleneck. Jiya had her hand on his bicep, using him for stability as she was bent over in laughter. There was movement to the image, a sense of life.

“This was right after Flynn tricked Wyatt into slurping hot sauce.” Rufus chuckled lightly at the memory.

“Did he…” Lorena started out. “Did he use a hot sauce packet? Cut it open, stick it inside a styrofoam cup, the straw inside the packet?”

“Yeah… Exactly.”

“He learned that from me,” she said quietly.

Enough time passed for the phone to go black. She sat it down and quietly pushed it away.

“He’s part of the team,” Rufus told her softly. “He’s fighting to stop Rittenhouse, to find a way to bring you and your daughter back to life. He hasn’t given up on you. And, to be frank, he’s in a much better position to fight than you.”

She glanced up at him.

“I know how that sounds,” he continued, taking a deep breath. “I know what I’m asking of you. To give up your life for his. And correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure he would do the same for you, and you would both do whatever it took to bring Iris back.”

She glanced down, unable to look at him.

“Please… if you know anything that could help?”

She continued to be quiet, avoiding looking at him. Seconds turned into minutes and Rufus started to lose hope that she would help. Was he crazy to think she would? He was basically asking her to commit suicide by helping him turn the world back into a timeline where she was dead. He wished he could say he could blame her for her reluctance. 

With a defeated sigh, he picked up his phone and stood. There had to be other options.

“Carlin,” she said as he moved towards the door.

“Yes?” 

“There… there was a note, in the journal.” She didn’t look at him and her voice was small. “It had your name attached to it. I looked into it, but couldn’t figure out how it pertained to you. Now I’m wondering if it wasn’t about you, but for you.”

Rufus’ pulse began to race with hope. “What did it say?”


	5. Chapter 5

**Now**

It was a study in dichotomies.

When Amy reached the bottom of the stairs, Lucy latched onto her as if she would disappear again. She wrapped her arms tight around her sister and buried her head in her hair as she cried.

“Glad to know you missed me,” Amy said softly as she hugged her back.

A few feet away, Lorena stepped off the ladder and stood about an arm’s reach in front of Flynn. Neither of them moved, just looking at each other as they talked without words. His eyes flitted almost hopefully at the Lifeboat that one more person might emerge. Lorena shook her head just enough to dash that hope. It stung enough to make his eyes prickle.

“How?” Lucy said emotionally, framing her sister’s face with her hands. “Emma said she fixed it so you could never come back.”

“Rufus.” Flynn’s voice was deep and controlled. “Explain.”

The pilot looked up from where he was once again exuberantly kissing Jiya who, to be honest, didn’t mind it, but she did look as confused as the rest of them. 

“Oh, ah, short of it?” Rufus cleared his throat. “I accidently landed in 1972 and caused a ripple effect that meant your house was attacked on the 11th, not the 10th.” Rufus looked at Lorena. “Flynn died, Scary Flynn didn’t, and that started a chain reaction that led to an even worse timeline than we’re in now.”

“Worse for whom?” Amy made a face at him.

“Okay, worse for me.” He looked back at Jiya. “You never went to Chinatown. Instead of having three years to slowly train yourself, you pushed too hard, too fast and… you were in a coma, you weren’t waking up.”

“Oh.” Jiya reached up to hold his face, rubbing her thumbs across his cheeks. 

“Wait,” Wyatt cut in. “If Jiya didn’t go to Chinatown, does that mean Jess was still dead in that timeline?”

“Rittenhouse didn’t need to recruit her,” Rufus explained, eyes still on Jiya. “You were dead. Scary Flynn killed you.”

A chorus of confusion rang out, but not from Flynn. He was extremely numb in that moment, a bevy of emotions kind of floundering around him. Nothing really wanted to stick, though there was a small uptick at the corner of his mouth at the news Lorena managed to do something he never could quite manage.

Lorena turned her head and looked straight at Wyatt. “I gave you ample warning, you’re the idiot who decided to pick up wired Semtex with eight seconds left on the timer and run with it.”

“You were trying to blow up the Capitol building,” Amy pointed out.

“No, I was trying to blow up a bunch of Rittenhouse Senators gathered for a meeting,” Lorena corrected her. “And besides, the British were going to burn it down like two years later anyway.”

“You killed me?” Wyatt was still stuck on that point of contention.

“Oh, Lord.” Lorena shook her head. “The tall one was definitely sharper.”

“Lorena’s a Sapper,” Flynn told him to avoid any more confusion.

“A Sapper?” Wyatt blinked. “Tabbed?”

Lorena gave him a steely look. “Yes, and I _earned_ it.”

The only response Wyatt could muster was a nod of respect doused in fear.

“That’s why she’s Scary Flynn,” Rufus explained to the group.

Connor stood from the command console and said, “If I am to hear you right, Lorena stole the Mothership, but didn’t go back to the _Hindenburg,_ thereby not erasing Amy nor returning their mother’s health?”

“You didn’t go after the _Hindenburg_?” Flynn asked Lorena.

“The only way to ensure the targets perished would be to do a high-altitude incineration,” she explained casually, “and there was no way to get to the gas valves in enough time to set up a proper altitude trigger.”

“You could have just put a bomb on board, in the cabin,” Flynn suggested, though admittedly losing confidence halfway through the sentence.

“And that is why you handle the guns, and I handle the explosives.”

“Scary Flynn.” Rufus seemed dead set on making this clear to everyone, even tough Flynn already knew it to be true.

“Rufus.” Agent Christopher crossed her arms, that calculating look in her eyes. “We’re going to need the long story.”

“Right now?” Rufus wrapped his arms tighter around Jiya.

Christopher looked between him clinging to Jiya, Lucy still clinging to Amy, and… and whatever was happening between Flynn and Lorena. The Agent apparently decided she couldn’t win this one. “Fine, you can debrief us at dinner.”

“Can do,” Rufus said then grabbed Jiya’s hand and booked it out of the room towards theirs. Everyone pretty much ignored his obvious intentions.

“I can’t believe I got you back,” Lucy said to Amy. “I… I have so many questions.”

“Well, that hasn’t changed.” Amy smiled at her. 

Lucy gestured for her sister to walk with her and they continued to talk as they made their way into the lounge area and sat on the sofa. 

Agent Christopher got out her phone and stepped away to make a call. No doubt preparing to figure out what to do with two people who didn’t exist. One was officially dead, and the other was never born at all. 

Only Wyatt and Connor were left, but they decided it was best to slink off. 

“Connor.” Flynn stopped him in his tracks.

“Yes?” the genius asked, confused.

“What do you have in your good stash right now?” Flynn asked him, not taking his eyes off Lorena.

“Ah, whiskey, and bourbon,” he answered.

“We’ll take both,” Lorena told him, and Connor apparently decided it wasn’t anywhere close to best to argue with her.

A few minutes later and Flynn was closing the door to the storage closet he called his room. Lorena sat down on the bed and immediately started to pour herself a glass of bourbon. Flynn went to sit in his chair, he had taken the whiskey. 

They sat like that for long enough to go through one glass each of the alcohol. Although, it didn’t actually take that long to do so. 

“I got up, that night?” Flynn finally asked her.

“Yeah,” she said, pouring herself another glass. “You felt awful about the night before. My last thought before I heard the silenced shots was that Iris was going to rope you into reading to her and you’d never make it back to bed.”

Lorena kicked back an entire shot of bourbon and let that burn. Unless something had happened to change her very biology, Lorena could outdrink him most days. It was still bad for her liver, but today was one of those days he wasn’t going to point that out.

When he saw her step out the Lifeboat, Flynn felt… every emotion at once. Happiness, fear, terror, relief, sadness… everything swirled together and he was surprised he still managed to function. Especially after having one split second of hope that Iris was with her. 

“You were the primary target,” Lorena continued to explain as she poured herself more alcohol. “They got you, then Iris, and I guess they thought I would be an easy target too. I got away, found Stiv.”

“He get you on that cargo plane to Brasil?” Flynn asked.

“Yeah,” she nodded. “Lucy came to see you at the bar, the one with the, uh, mural of Mary Magdalene out front?”

Flynn nodded back, refilling his glass with whiskey. “So you read the journal?” 

“Many times over.” Somehow a chuckle escaped her. “Lucy was surprised to see me though she covered it well. I realized later it was because she was expecting you.”

He threw back a shot of whiskey as he considered what this might mean. Just how identical was this journal to the one he read? The secrets within that he hadn’t even told Lucy. The journal read like it had been written across many timelines, and Lorena’s could have been different. But how much of it?

“It was always supposed to be you.” Lorena finished off another glass. “My timeline was… an aberration.”

“Is that why you and Amy hitched a ride to this timeline?” he asked with less tact than he was meaning.

“Yeah.” More bourbon flowed and he idly wondered why Lorena wasn’t just drinking it straight out the bottle. “We were the only two who would disappear instead of being overwritten. First, we had to figure out what went wrong in 1972. Once we did, the three of us went back, fixed it, and ended up here.”

“I… I’m glad you did,” he replied honestly. It still hurt and he ached that their daughter hadn’t made it in the other timeline. But now it was the two of them, they could both focus on saving Iris. This gave them twice the chance of pulling it off.

“Did… did you and Lucy?” she asked quietly as she took another sip of her bourbon.

So the journal hadn’t been that much different. Flynn let the whiskey he was drinking finish burning its way down before he answered. He had to tell her the truth. “No. There… there’s something there, it just hasn’t made it that far.”

“It’s a pity.” She let out a long breath. “Celibacy is a waste of energy.”

“Are you telling me I should have slept with another woman?” He frowned, wondering if he had drank too much of the whiskey and misheard. The bottle next to him was almost completely empty, though it did tend to take more than that to get him close to being drunk.

“I’m telling you I was dead,” Lorena replied, and this time took a gulp of her drink. The bottle of bourbon was empty now. “I lost all claim to your, ah, virtue.”

He carefully considered her words. She had been dead to him, but in her timeline, he had been dead to her. “Are you saying that you…?”

“No, but I read the journal. I guess no _Titanic_ yet,” she answered tiredly. 

He wasn’t sure how to respond to that. He knew what the journal said, about him and Lucy. He knew about the feelings he was having for the historian. Any denial would feel like a lie.

“Bah,” she said as checked the bottom the bourbon bottle to confirm that yes, it was empty. “We should have gotten more alcohol.”

“If we had known you were coming, I would have requested a few crates of vodka from Christopher,” he said wryly, handing over what was left of his whiskey. “I never forgot just how much you can put away.”

“God bless my Russian heritage,” she said as she took the bottle, but then paused when she realized what she said. Tears came to her eyes. “There has to be a reason. There has to be a point to Rufus stumbling onto my timeline and bringing me here to this one. Something I should do.”

“Don’t,” he told her firm and clear.

Her eyes flicked up at him, daring him to prove that he knew what she was thinking.

“I’m not letting you sacrifice yourself in the past,” he said, seeing the glimmer of recognition flit across her face. He had similar ideas too, of going back and doing something to make sure his family lived, even if it cost him his own life. But ultimately, “There is no way to control enough variables to make sure any possible plan works. And if it doesn’t, then you won’t be able to try again.”

“There’s two of us now, though—”

“No,” Flynn was absolutely clear. “I am _not_ going to lose you on an extremely long long-shot of a Hail Mary. But we _will_ save Iris, together. We’ll find a way.”

“I want to save Iris,” she choked the words out, “but I can’t live with the memories of seeing her dead. I’m not as strong as you.” He couldn’t imagine the level of the grief she must be feeling, that of a woman who saw the child she carried for nine months be cut down.

“Strength has nothing to do with it.” He stood up from his chair and moved to set next to her, making sure to keep just enough space between them that they didn’t touch. “I see those images, same as you, every time I close my eyes. What keeps me going is the promise of being able to replace those images with new ones. Like right now, seeing you alive, instead of lying dead in the hallway.”

“I don’t feel very alive,” she said quietly, then took a drink of whiskey straight from the bottle.

“You will,” he promised her. “I felt the same way, but being a part of this team, it’s been good for me, made me realize a lot of things about myself, about the mission. Give it some time, and you’ll see it too.”

On the walk to the room, Lorena told him she hadn’t been released after getting unknowingly set up by Lucy. The team continued on their mission against Rittenhouse without her help. This was one of the reasons her timeline was in much dire straits than his. 

“I may be too far gone for this… new family of yours,” she said, pouring another drink.

“I wouldn’t really call them a family,” he replied. “They certainly don’t think that way.”

She gave him a side glance and then he suddenly wasn’t sure. Their lives had gone so differently. The team never brought her into the bunker, welcomed her and let her help them. Had they blamed her that much for Wyatt’s death? Flynn was far more guilty for his roll in Anthony’s death, and yet now they worked and lived together, sharing the pain as well as the laughs.

“It’s all very complicated,” he finally settled on. “And even if you want to use that word, family, then they would be an addition, not a replacement.”

“Sure.” She emptied her glass.

Flynn decided to take a risk. He took the glass out of her hand and sat it behind them on the bed. He had already noted that she wasn’t wearing her wedding ring, but he couldn’t read into that. She would often take her ring off at night, if her hands were feeling a little swollen from too much typing or literally digging in the dirt. If things went down for her as fast as they had for him, then the ring could easily have been left on the nightstand.

Taking a slow, deep breath, he slipped his hand into hers. A bolt of something surged through him, not exactly pleasant, but not all that awful either. This was the first time he had touched her in five years, and his body didn’t know how to react. 

She was staring at their joined hands and he could tell she was having the same reaction. A different kind of fight or flight response to stimulus. She glanced up at him, something going soft in her features.

It was a bad idea, but he wanted to kiss her. Press his lips to hers and push her down onto the bed and make love to her over and over again. Was he that starved for intimacy, or was it because it was _her_? And was he looking to reconnect, or would it simply be a case of long overdue break-up sex? Clearing out all their unfinished business so they could move on?

Lorena pulled her hand out of his and finished off the whiskey left in the bottle in one long draft. 

They sat there in quiet for a few minutes, staring into the space in front of them but not seeing it.

“Fine,” Lorena finally said. “We do this your way, for now.”

She stood up and it nearly startled Flynn, part of him still not believing she was really there, alive. She moved towards the door and he asked, “Where are you going?”

“I brought a few things, from the other timeline,” she explained as she grabbed the doorhandle. “Left them in the Lifeboat. Might as well grab them now.”

For a split second he wondered if she was going to steal the Lifeboat, but only for that second. If Lorena had changed so much that she would bold face lie to him and sneak off behind his back, then she wasn’t Lorena anymore. His wife was a soldier, like him, and had a sense of honor. Sometimes it’s the only thing you’re left with after a battle.

She walked out and he collapsed in on himself. 

There were so many things to consider in that moment, so many thoughts racing through his head. She had read the journal, one likely near identical to the one he received. She knew about the _Titanic _, so all the other… intimate missions must have been in there. The ones Flynn hadn’t been sure to make of. The ones he wasn’t going to mention because he didn’t want Lucy to feel coerced or obligated or any number of unacceptable things.__

__Flynn hadn’t lied to Lorena, there was something there between him and Lucy, some kind of connection. They were just beginning to explore what it might be, her having spent a few nights in his room, just talking. Sure, he wanted to kiss her, hold her, and drown in her, but it had to be more than just that. He even went so far as to ask himself if he was truly falling in love with Lucy, if that was what these feelings were._ _

__He had been working up the courage to broach the subject with Lucy, but then Rufus disappeared and that took precedence. Then he came back, Lorena in tow._ _

__Lucy was focused on Amy right now, but eventually she’d have a moment of realization that his dead wife had returned, just like Wyatt’s. But what Lucy and Wyatt had was on a different stage, they had slept together, which is something of a promise. Then Wyatt broke that promise once he discovered Jess was alive, and then he was less than a gentleman about the whole situation._ _

__Flynn was not Wyatt._ _

__He needed to step back and think with his head and his heart, not his dick. Lorena was his wife and he didn’t expect anything from her, she didn’t owe him anything. But she was clearly in a lot of pain, one that he was far too familiar with. She needed help and support, needed… a friend, at the very least. He wasn’t going to abandon her just because he was having feelings for Lucy._ _

__As for Lucy, she was quite capable of making her own decisions. Only she could speak to her heart’s desires and how much risk she was willing to take with it. All he could do is what he always does, respect her and the choices she makes._ _

__He’d destroy himself before he hurt either of the women he loved._ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note: I wrote this chapter before January 6th and after consideration I decided not to change the mission referenced in this chapter.


	6. Chapter 6

**Now**

Over dinner, which was leftover stew, Rufus told the whole story of what happened. Amy contributed a lot, especially the finer details of the other timeline. Occasionally Lorena would correct something, but mostly kept quiet on the outskirt of the group. 

Flynn sat next to her but there was a distinct air of them not sitting together. Not like Rufus and Jiya, or Lucy and Amy. He tried not to think too much into it. The both of them had been thrown a rather large curveball. And they were adult enough to recognize it.

The debrief went on for a good time, there were plenty of questions. Flynn took extra note of a few things. Like Lucy looking confused at Lorena when it was revealed to the group that she had been left in prison rather than released. 

“Why wouldn’t we have brought her in?” Lucy asked her sister. “She had intel on Rittenhouse, knowledge of the journal.”

“She killed Wyatt,” Amy pointed out.

“I gave him ample warning,” Lorena said as if it was the thousandth time.

Amy ignored her. “Okay, yes, it was suggested, and yeah, you were for it. But Wyatt literally died on the Lifeboat platform at Mason Industries, in front of everyone. He was hemorrhaging so badly from the blast… You couldn’t have saved him if you were right next to a modern hospital. Maybe it was an overly emotional decision, but…” Amy shook her head and shrugged her shoulders.

The group grappled with the idea that Wyatt died like that. The man himself looking pale as a sheet. Lucy seemed to be conflicted. Everyone else was just… quiet.

“No hard feelings,” Lorena said with a light pep in her voice that jostled everyone. She smiled at them when they all looked her way.

Flynn bowed his head to hide his grin, at least some things hadn’t changed.

Rufus explained the mission they went on to determine what went wrong. It was based on Lorena’s intel and Rufus insisted she come along. This part of the story included Rufus’ reasoning for declaring Lorena the Scary Flynn. It involved the tactical use of explosives.

“You don’t look surprised,” Rufus said to Flynn.

“Lorena’s always been the scary one,” Flynn explained.

“Garcia’s always been too soft,” Lorena didn’t miss a beat.

“I thought you were the super religious one,” Wyatt commented, proving he had at least listened to some of Flynn’s commentary about his family over the past two years.

Lorena smiled sweetly at him. “Have you read the old testament?”

Wyatt swallowed hard and looked away.

This time Flynn didn’t bother to hide his grin.

He was very much reminded of the Sapper he met all those years ago, hard and sarcastic to protect herself in the military. It was an outer shell he somehow cracked through. A shell she had mostly shed once she was out. She didn’t want to be that person anymore, not constantly anyway. 

Rufus ended the story talking about how the three of them went back and fixed the mistake, knowing they would be leaving behind the people they knew. It had been a hard decision. Everyone left behind was choosing to sacrifice that version of themselves, essentially die. But it would mean Connor and Wyatt would return, Jiya would be awake, and Rittenhouse would be on the run.

“It was Lucy’s idea, actually,” Amy told them, glancing almost shyly at Lucy. “She accepted that this timeline was better off, you had done more damage to Rittenhouse and taken less. Rufus said you were still trying to find a way to bring me back. And in a way, you did.”

It was a very soft and heartfelt moment for the sisters. Flynn couldn’t help but feel so damn happy for Lucy. He didn’t think he could forgive himself for what he did, accidently erasing her sister. He promised himself, and Lucy, that somehow, someway, they would bring Amy back. 

“I’m sorry,” he said, unable not to.

Amy gave him a very judging expression, nothing he didn’t deserve. “It really wasn’t mentioned in the journal?”

“No.”

“I can vouch for that,” Lorena said, she’d been quiet for a while. “The journal only talked about the _Hindenburg_ as an opportunity, seeing as so many Rittenhouse heads were supposed to be aboard. I considered it, had it in my back pocket as an option. I’m sure there were missions I did that Garcia decided holding off on.”

“I didn’t have anyone confident enough in explosives to pull off something as delicate as bombing the Capitol Building,” he told her. “I didn’t want to bring anyone else on board, not if I could help it.”

“You both have different ways of approaching a problem,” Lucy observed, looking between them. “That resulted in divergent timelines.”

“Yeah,” Amy said thoughtfully, still judging him. There was a distinct familiarity between the sisters. “I can accept it wasn’t intentional. But I won’t exactly forget it either.”

Flynn nodded at her. Amy didn’t know him, only had Lucy’s word and Lorena’s actions to base her opinions on. She needed time to come to grips with everything, being in a whole new world that didn’t know she existed. He wouldn’t burden her with his absolution.

A few more details were sorted out, but it’d gotten late and everyone was pretty emotionally exhausted.

“We’ll need to sort out sleeping arrangements,” Christopher said as she looked around. “I’ll have to do something about getting more beds in here, but it may take a few days.”

“Well,” Connor sighed. “I suppose I can give up my room for a few nights. It is a double.”

“Mine too,” Wyatt said carefully, looking at Lucy while also trying not to. At least he was smart enough to realize she wouldn’t want to sleep in same the room he shared with Jess while she was with them. “How about Lucy and Amy take yours, the Flynn’s can have mine, I’ll… sleep on the sofa.”

“I’ll take the sofa,” Lorena called out with ease. “That way only Mason has to move to share with you. Simpler that way.”

Several sets of eyes glanced between Flynn and Lorena. If they expected him to argue, then they really didn’t get it. But none of them said anything, except Lucy. “Are you sure you’ll be comfortable? It’s not that soft.”

“I could take it,” Flynn offered. “You can have my room.”

“You are taller than that sofa is long,” Lorena pointed out. “And as comical as that would be to see, I’ve spent well over a year in a room that small, with one eye open, shiv in hand. I kinda like the idea of both not being walled in and actually sleeping.”

She had used a tone of voice that he knew from experience meant that while she was usually up to hearing other options and having a debate, this was not one of those times. So he simply replied, “I’ll see if I can find you an extra blanket.”

The next half hour was a lot of shuffling as everyone got ready for bed. Flynn handed off the extra blanket to Lorena, non-verbally asking her if she needed anything else, from him, or in general. She shook her head and went to lay out the blanket and cozy things up.

Flynn wanted to reach out and grab her, hold her, breath her in. But he was afraid of that very need and desire. Of not being able to let go. Of it being nothing more than an ich to scratch. Or of doing things that would make any potential future between them nearly impossible. 

She had made her position clear by pulling away from him at every chance. 

“Goodnight,” he said softly and turned to leave. He thought he heard her say it in return, but it was so light, and not something he wanted to call her out on.

He headed to his room and walked past Wyatt coming out of the bathroom.

“Hey, Flynn,” Wyatt stopped him. “I can sleep on the sofa. You and your wife can share a larger room.”

“And why would we need to?” Flynn asked, enjoying seeing the utter confusion on the man’s face.

“Because, you know…” Wyatt just stopped there, seemingly unable to say the word sex out loud.

“And you wonder why you screwed up everything with Jess and Lucy,” Flynn told him with a smirk. “Think with your head, not with your dick.”

“Yeah, well, are you sure you’re thinking with yours?” Wyatt shot back, thankfully keeping his voice low. “Have you told your wife that Lucy’s been sleeping in your room?” 

“Sleeping, nothing else.” Flynn did not appreciate the man’s insinuations, especially as he had no right to chaperone Lucy’s actions. It had already been made clear to everyone what was happening, or not happening, though it wasn’t really their business. “Listen, you abandoned Lucy for Jess, ignored all the warning signs, got Rufus killed, all while trying to manipulate Lucy into being your side piece. You have no place to judge how I conduct my relationships.”

That shut the man up, though he did look like he might haul off and punch him. Flynn might even let him, just to have the distraction. But Wyatt instead stormed off to his room. Flynn didn’t discount Wyatt saying something to Lorena, casually “letting it slip” about him and Lucy. It wouldn’t change anything, he already answered that question, and Lorena had read the journal.

Tomorrow was another day, the shock would have worn off and maybe they could all start thinking clearly. Until then, if he couldn’t make a decision with his head, then he sure as hell weren’t going to make one with other organs in his body.


	7. Chapter 7

**Now**

Lorena was laying on the sofa, eyes closed, but awake. She had gotten some sleep, four hours worth, which was a luxury by Sapper standards. Most of the twenty-eight nights of Sapper school involved only getting two, maybe three hours of sleep, if she was lucky. But that had been the point. 

War isn’t a nine-to-five job. A Sapper needed to be able to function at any time of the day, under any condition. That included having little to no sleep. Not that they ever let her see combat anyway after she graduated. Sometimes she joked it was actually training for spending a lifetime with Garcia and his awful snoring.

What she would give to crawl in beside him, feel his warmth and hear him snore up a storm. 

But things were far too complicated.

They had been dead to each other for years, in the very literal sense. They had both gone through the grieving process, whether they wanted to accept that or not. She had seen the photo of Flynn, smiling and happy, without her in his life. She was glad he was recovering from his trauma, but it didn’t make it hurt any less on her end. 

When he touched her earlier, it burned like alcohol on a wound. It felt like it should be a good thing, and for perhaps a split second it was. And then all she could think about was the little girl they made together. The angel that didn’t get to live while she got a second chance. 

It wasn’t fair, it wasn’t right. 

None of this was. 

Her eyes flitted open and she glanced towards the Lifeboat. There had to be a way, there had to be enough time, for her to convince her 2014 self to run away and hide with Iris. Rittenhouse could then take her out, and that’s who 2014 Garcia would find dead on the hallway floor, giving him plenty of reason to steal the Mothership. 

Convincing him Iris was dead too might be a tad trickier, but she had some options. 

She closed her eyes and tried to get comfortable again. She may have told Garcia that they would do things his way right now, but right now eventually turns into later, and plans change. She would keep this in her back pocket. It was her Hail Mary play. 

And she was still convinced it was the best plan. This way Iris would be alive with a mother who wasn’t irrevocably broken. Of course, that meant she would be dead, but that didn’t seem like too much to give to save her daughter. And Garcia, he’d be free to move on… be with Lucy.

The journal had made it very clear regarding the depths of their relationship. Clearly the _Titanic_ mission hadn’t happened yet, but that had been a result of them falling for each other, not the start. And Lorena had to be honest with herself, Garcia was already lost to her. 

Lorena wanted to be angry, and for a time she was. But reality has a way of slapping you in the face. She was dead, years had passed. She couldn’t blame him for finding someone to make him happy again. Someone smart, fierce, and determined, who understood him. 

The woman she used to be.

And would probably never be again.


	8. Chapter 8

**Now**

The next day felt like everyone had a hangover. It finally settled in that Amy and Lorena were really there, alive, refugees from another timeline. 

Christopher was trying to sort out the bedroom situation, looking at two utility closets and wondering if they could tear down the wall between them since neither was big enough for a bed on its own. That would still leave someone on the sofa, unless two people decided to continue to share.

No one said anything directly about the possibilities of Flynn and Lorena sharing a room. 

Or of Flynn and Lucy…

Everyone knew how the Lucy, Wyatt, and Jess situation went, and no one wanted a repeat of that. And since Lorena seemed to be giving Flynn a mostly cold shoulder, they all adopted a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy and just left them be. If they didn’t talk about it, then no drama could occur.

“We need to talk,” Flynn told Lucy when he managed to catch her alone in the kitchen.

“Yeah,” she said quietly, not meeting his eyes. Usually he could tell exactly what she was thinking. Not right now, not about this.

The jump alarm sounded, rescuing him from an awkward reply. They walked over to the console as everyone else was showing up.

“Okay.” Rufus was at the computer, checking the launch status. “Looks like Florida, January 30th, 1958.”

Everyone looked to Lucy and she took a second to flip that date over in her head. “That’s the day before the Explorer 1 satellite was launched. It was the first successful American satellite since Russia launched Sputnik. We’re talking the beginning of the Cold War here.”

“Right,” Christopher crossed her arms. “You four get going. I like not speaking Russian.”

“Chto plokhogo v tom, chtoby govorit' po-russki?” Lorena asked the agent who just stared blankly at her. Flynn couldn’t help but smile.

“Let’s go,” Wyatt ushered them towards the Lifeboat.

A few minutes later they were in 1958. First order of business, as always, was find some clothes and steal a car.

There were a lot of people at Cape Canaveral who were interested in Explorer 1. It was supposed to be a purely scientific flight, but of course, Rittenhouse had other ideas. This ended up splitting the group as Rufus and Wyatt went after the technical stuff, while Flynn and Lucy tracked down a spy. 

The two of them worked in tandem to unmask the Rittenhouse goon, often speaking without words. They made quite the team, as promised. Once done, they got to the designated meet up location first, which was a look out over the Florida beach. 

“We, ah, still need to talk,” Flynn managed to say as Lucy sat on the trunk of a classic car and he leaned against it, a cool breeze drifting by.

“Yes, we do.” Lucy said neutrally. 

They sat there quietly for a few minutes, watching the waves.

“I’ve meant everything I’ve said,” Flynn finally spoke up. “About wanting to get to know you, this you, not just the you from the journal, if you’ll let me. We make quite the team, and we’re the only two who really understand each other.”

“Not anymore,” Lucy said quietly. “I have Amy now, and you have… your wife.”

“Lorena…” the name drifted as he collected his thoughts, still staring out into the water. “She’s hurting right now. I see in her myself, from years ago. The same self-loathing, reckless suicidal thoughts that led me to risk my own life in saving Gabriel’s. She… she didn’t get the opportunities that I did, to heal.”

“You need to be there for her.”

“Yes.” That wasn’t the part that was in question. “I still love her, but I don’t know if I’m _in_ love with her, or if seeing her has… stirred up the sediment which will sink back to the bottom once this typhoon has passed.”

“You probably already know this…” Lucy let out a deep breath. “But you can’t heal Lorena, and your marriage, at the same time. You can’t… hang your recovery hat on romantic feelings.”

“Yeah.” He saw Lucy and Wyatt learn that one the hard way. “I am going to need to focus first on getting her better. And… and I don’t know if there will be anything left of our marriage afterwards.”

Lucy paused before asking, “Do you want there to be?” 

“I just don’t know,” he admitted, then finally looked over at Lucy. Her eyes were as glassy as his was. “I never wanted to hurt you. From the very beginning, I…”

“I know.” She tried to smile at him. “My feelings for you are… complicated. You’re my closest friend right now. Amy and I, we need time too, to get back to where we once were.”

“You will,” he promised her because he knew her, he knew that she would fight for Amy, for their relationship.

“So where does that leave us?” Lucy asked him. 

It was a question he had grappled with since Lorena walked out of his room the day before. He was pretty sure he was full-tilt in love with Lucy, a fact he had been afraid of. Love is scary enough as is, the way it can drive people to madness. But he was a man of honor and he wouldn’t abandon Lorena, nor would he make things difficult for Lucy. She already went through the wringer. 

“Lucy…” the word was slow on his lips. 

She managed a smile at him, her eyes glossy. There was an air of strength about her, a determination. Lucy Preston was one of the strongest people he knew.

“I believe in fate,” she told him, “in meant to be. We’ll both handle our responsibilities. We’ll defeat Rittenhouse. And then I guess we’ll see what happens next.”

“Yes, we will.” He nodded, accepting that this was the path forward they needed to take. 

If they were meant to be, then they would find each other again.


	9. Chapter 9

**Then**

“Are you sure?” Lucy asked Rufus as he was typing away at the computer.

“Yes,” he answered with the first sense of surety he'd had since landing in this timeline. “The message that was in the journal had coded references to three of my favorite things. If I treat them as X, Y, Z coordinates, i.e. year, date, location, then I know where I’m going.”

“Year?” Lucy prompted him.

“1974, the year that D&D was first released.”

“Date?”

“March 22nd, first day of filming _Star Wars: A New Hope_ , well, in 1976.”

“And location?”

“Chicago.”

“You’re from Chicago,” Amy pointed out the obvious as she stood to the side.

“So is Michael O’Hare,” he replied, then continued before she could ask who that was. “He’s the actor who played Jeffrey Sinclair on _Babylon 5_. That’s what ‘Hello, old friend. Welcome home.’ meant.”

Dave was walking up to them. “I thought that was about Eric Clapton.”

“You clearly never watched _Babylon 5_.” Rufus was not impressed.

“Well,” Lucy shrugged. “I did wonder why that was at the end and not the beginning of the message. But you’re sure it’s year, date, location?”

“That’s how the coordinates are laid out in the Lifeboat and Mothership.”

“Okay then.” Lucy took a thoughtful breath, tapping her hand against her leg. “We go to Chicago, March 22nd, 1974, and see what we see. But we can’t change the timeline, not yet, not until we know what’s going on, what might actually happen. For all we know, this could be the key to stopping Rittenhouse for good.”

Rufus stopped typing and looked at her, reminded again that this wasn’t his Lucy. “What about Jiya? I’m not leaving her in a coma.”

“What do you think Jiya would want more?” Lucy asked him, stern but soft. “To wake up, or for Rittenhouse to finally be defeated for good?”

“Don’t make me answer that,” he told her, surprised by how harsh it came out.

“Recon first,” she said softly. “Then we know what we’re looking at, what decisions to make.”

Rufus looked back at the computer, finishing up what he was doing. He didn’t want to entertain the possibility that Lucy was right. This could be the big break to stop Rittenhouse. Could he sacrifice Jiya to that goal? There… there was still a chance she could wake up.

“Alright.” Dave clapped his hands together. “Sounds like Christopher is back. Let’s get ready to head out.”

“I should probably put on some real shoes,” Amy mumbled, looking down at her fuzzy slippers.

“No need,” Christopher said as she approached. “You won’t be going on this mission.”

“What?” Amy’s question died on her lips as they all saw who walked up with the NSA Agent.

“What’s she doing here?” Dave bellowed, or at least as much as a man like him could. 

“I asked for her,” Rufus said, standing up. “I want her to come with us.”

There was a chorus of no’s from Amy and Dave, though Lucy was silent.

“You owe me twenty bucks, Christopher,” Lorena said, smirking. 

The agent gave her an annoying side-eye in return.

“Come on, guys.” Rufus put his foot down. “She has knowledge we don’t have. We may need it to understand what we’re looking at, or what we’re meant to find.” He put his hand up to stop any retorts. “PLUS, and I hate saying this, but our team has worked the best when it’s me, Lucy, Wyatt, _and_ Flynn. So, me and Lucy,” he gestured between them, then at Dave, “tall Wyatt,” and finished by pointing at Lorena, “ _a_ Flynn.”

“Ma’am,” Dave turned to Christopher. “Flynn is a terrorist, a murderer, and has her own agenda. I will not go out in the field worrying if I’m going to be stabbed in the back.”

“Oh, honey,” Lorena smiled sweetly at him. “I’d stab you in the front.”

“See!”

“Enough,” Christopher stopped him with her mom-voice. “I’ve talked this over with Rufus who made some valid arguments, and since Lucy agrees—”

“You do?” Amy looked at her sister.

“Flynn’s goal has always been to stop Rittenhouse,” Lucy explained, a slight shrug to her shoulders. “You can’t deny she’s been effective, and we’ve been losing ground this whole time she’s been in prison. I’ve said it before, we should all work together.”

There was a long hard second where Amy and Dave accepted that they were outnumbered. 

“Fine,” Dave finally said, turning to Flynn. “But you’re intel only. No guns, no knives, no explosives.”

“Combustibles are okay then,” she said, nodding her head. “Good to know.”

“He just said no explosives,” Amy pointed out.

“Explosives and combustibles are two different categories,” Lorena explained with a smug smile that was far too familiar to Rufus. Then she looked back to Dave. “What’s your stance on detonative and deflagrated? Are both off the table or just the detonative explosives?”

Dave gave her a tired expression.

This was going to be a very long trip.


	10. Chapter 10

**Then**

“Are you sure this is the place?” Dave asked him as they were walking down a street in Chicago, 1974.

“Yup, see that?” Rufus pointed to a small mural that was on the side of a building. It showed a lot of wear, but it would be touched up in 1994 for the 50th anniversary of D-Day. It said, ‘Welcome Home, Soldiers.’ “I passed this all the time I was in middle school. The Sinclair reference pointed me to Chicago, to this welcome home sign.”

“It kind of makes my head spin,” Dave admitted, checking the street for signs of trouble. Rufus noticed Lorena doing the same. “Feels a bit overly complex.”

“It had to be,” Lorena said drolly. “Otherwise I would have figured it out and probably messed everything up.”

“The message was meant for me,” Rufus agreed, then his shoulders fell. “But that was the end of it. I don’t know where to go from here.”

There was a long minute as they looked around, trying to figure it out. 

“How about…” Lucy started. “How about we follow the path you would take to school. This may just be the starting point and we’ll see something along the way?”

Lucy was usually right about these things, so they started walking. It was a long walk Rufus had to make as a teen, in shoes with holes in the soles. But his mother always made sure he had a lunch to bring with him. Food or shoes was a terrible choice for a mother to have to make, but he knew she had been doing her best with the cards that life had dealt her.

“Wait,” Lucy stopped them, pointing down a side street they were passing. “That building, it says Keynes and Associates.”

The building in question looked like some kind of manufacturing warehouse, completely open at the bottom with offices above. He had passed it all the time and only really took notice of it once, after some windows got busted out by probably kids playing with rocks.

“Oh, that’s right.” Memories came rushing back to Rufus of when he died, temporarily. “You have family named Keynes because your great grandfather was Nicholas Keynes.”

“Exactly.”

“Who was also a descendant of John Rittenhouse,” he added as an aside.

“I’m sorry, what?” Lucy said, startled. Everyone was startled, actually.

“Ho boy.” Rufus swallowed hard, the realization hitting him of what the changes in this timeline meant. “Oh, right, in this timeline your mom still met your step-dad and got cancer. She didn’t go back to World War II, bring Keynes to the present, and try to take over the Council.”

For a moment Rufus worried that he dropped another bombshell calling the man who raised her, Henry Wallace, her step-dad. But that didn’t seem to faze Lucy. It was highly likely Cahill had already told her in this timeline, likely part of some bid to turn or manipulate her.

“Lucy is a Rittenhouse?” Lorena said, staring at the woman, confused and possibly distraught. “That wasn’t in the journal.”

“I’m a descendant… of John Rittenhouse?” Lucy said quietly. 

“Okay.” Rufus scratched the back of his neck. Cahill was probably holding that card up his sleeve for now. “I just opened an existential can of worms.”

“You can’t worry about this right now,” Lorena told Lucy softly, trying to meet her eyes. “You’re not your DNA. You’re Lucy Preston. And you need to find a way into that building, find out what happened, so you can protect your sister.”

Lucy turned her eyes to the woman, took long two breaths, then nodded. “We have a job to do.” She looked at Rufus. “You can tell me all about this when we get back.”

“Will do,” he said with both anxiety and relief. This was going to be some story to tell.

Dave took point and they headed down the side street to connect to the alley running behind the building. It seemed very quiet for mid-day and he wondered if there was a specific time they were supposed to be there, to see or find whatever would get him back to his timeline.

There was a large truck and lots of crates sitting out, ready to be loaded. The rolling steel door was raised to about four feet. It was like someone forgot something and went back inside, or was on a lunch break.

“Who would leave merchandise unattended,” Lucy said, running her hands over one of the boxes. The words ‘machine parts’ were emblazoned on the sides in black stencil. “In Chicago.”

Rufus didn’t take offense to that, and he had an answer. “Only someone who owns the neighborhood. Who has a reputation of extreme retribution if you so much as steal a nickel from them.”

“Sounds like Rittenhouse,” Dave said wryly.

“The whole place is a front,” Lorena added, she had already clocked all the windows, doors, etc, just as he’d seen her husband do on many of occasion. “Probably a stagging ground too, with this much real estate.”

Lucy nodded, gesturing to the rolling door. “Inside is where we’ll find out what happened to change the timeline.”

They crept to the opening, and seeing Dave crouch to get under it was actually pretty hilarious. It helped to break the tension Rufus was feeling. Answers were good, but what if those answers left Jiya in a coma?

There were tons of machinery in the open space, pipes and tubing everywhere. If he sat down and had a good look, he could have probably figured out what they were used for.

“Who are you?” some men said, being just as startled as they were at each other’s sudden appearance.

“Well, ah,” Lucy said, trying to talk their way out of the situation. Unfortunately, she failed.

Rufus regretted everything as he dived for cover. This was supposed to be recon, not a shoot-out. 

“Watch it,” Lorena said as she pushed him down behind some barrels. 

Lucy and Dave had dived the other way, behind some kind of metal cutting machine. The Delta Force agent had brought a real gun with him, having apparently been warned to do so after Wyatt’s death. That was good, Rufus couldn’t watch the man die a second time. He didn’t want to watch anyone die, actually. 

He wanted to go home.

Bullets buried themselves into the barrels. The wooden structures were only going to last so long. Beside him, Lorena cursed in frustration. 

“Flynn!” Lucy shouted. Rufus saw her rummaging through a dufflebag one of the Rittengoons had dropped when the fighting started.

“What?” Lorena snarkly shouted back.

“Remember Kalamazoo?” 

Lorena paused for a second. “Yes?”

“Don’t do it, Lucy!” Dave yelled once he figured out what she was referencing.

“Here!” Lucy was already sliding the duffle across the concrete floor towards them.

Shots continued to ring out as Lorena grabbed it, unzipping the bag to see what was inside. Once she did, her eyes lit up and he was reminded of when Flynn got a gun from Christopher.

Lorena pulled out two hand grenades. 

“You’re going to use those inside??” Rufus squeaked.

“I won’t hit anything load bearing,” she said as she held one in each hand, using her middle fingers to pull the pins out of each.

“You sure?” Rufus gulped.

“I always check structural stability when I enter a building,” she replied, releasing the lever on one, then the other. “It’s an occupational hazard.”

She wasn’t throwing the grenades.

“Ah, Lorena?” Rufus went wide eye, staring at the very dangerous explosives which were now live and ticking down.

“Yes?” the woman replied absently. She seemed to be keeping time.

“Grenades!” was all Rufus could say.

“Yes.” 

A half second later, she threw them up and over their cover in what seemed like a deliberate arc. Rufus reflexively covered his ears, so did Lorena. There was an explosion, followed milliseconds later by another. 

Then everything went quiet.

Dave, gun drawn, slowly peeked around the machine. “Clear.”

Rufus slowly stood, surveying the damage. From what he could tell, Lorena had thrown the grenades so the first one actually exploded mid-air, right above the first group of Rittenhouse men. This knocked the second grenade sideways, which exploded closer to the second group. 

“That’s some _Call of Duty_ shit right there.” Rufus was suitably impressed.

“Eh, I was off to the left.” Lorena shrugged, throwing the duffle over her shoulder. “I’m getting rusty.”

Rufus was also suitably terrified. “Did anyone tell you, you are scarier than your husband?”

“All the time, why?”

“Great job,” Lucy said as she joined them in walking towards the carnage.

Lorena nodded at her and possibly blushed, it was hard to tell in the light.

“Give me the duffle,” Dave ordered Lorena.

“No,” she replied flatly.

Lucy got between them. “Leave it be, Dave.”

“It’s Flynn,” he countered as if that explained everything.

“She’s helping us.” Lucy defended Lorena like he’d seen her defend Flynn. It was all a bit déjà vu with a side of _Twilight Zone_. “We’re all on the same side here.”

There was a short little standoff, Rufus wondering if he should get into the middle of it. This wasn’t his Lucy, or Dave, and he knew nothing of Lorena. He only knew that Dave blamed the woman for killing his friend.

“I get it,” Rufus decided to weigh in. “Flynn, uh, Garcia Flynn, he killed a friend of my mine too. Anthony. Which, now that I think about it, did he survive this timeline?”

“Emma got to him,” Lorena supplied, neutrally.

“Doesn’t surprise me.” Rufus sighed, hoping that one day, fixing all the damage Rittenhouse had done would mean saving his friend as well. “Anyway, he killed Anthony, and I will never forget that he did. But at the end of the day, this, _all of this_ , is because of Rittenhouse. So am I mad at Flynn, sure, but I’m madder than hell at them. We need to work together, because not doing so is just giving them the advantage.”

The other three looked suitable chastised, which was good. Rufus needed them to move past their differences, otherwise he would never get back to his own timeline, to Jiya.

There was a scrape of glass and metal, someone was scrambling.

“Short leash,” Dave told Lorena as he moved towards the sound, and they followed.


	11. Chapter 11

**Then**

“Go that way,” Dave yelled out, probably at Rufus, maybe at Lorena, the two went that way anyway.

The man they were chasing tried to double back through more machinery, but Rufus managed to get in front of him.

“You!” Rufus shouted, realizing it was the same guy from 1972, burnt orange suit and all.

The man recognized Rufus who had changed out of his hoodie into plaid, bell-bottom pants and a button-up. They stared at each other for a long moment, in shock. This man was the answer to fixing this mess and getting his Jiya back.

Lorena body tackled him.

Dave and Lucy appeared, the latter grabbing the man and making him sit on some stairs that led up to a mezzanine deck for the warehouse.

“It’s you!” the man shouted accusatorially at Rufus.

“It me.” Rufus unapologetically shrugged.

“This is the guy you ran off the road?” Lucy asked, having figured it out quickly.

“Oh yeah,” Rufus was dead sure of it, even without the man’s confirmation. He’d probably remember his face for the rest of his life. “What happened? After I left you.”

“I’m not going to tell you anything,” the man baulked. 

“Come on, man.” Rufus did not need this right now. “I don’t want all your Rittenhouse-y secrets. I just want to know what happened after I left you on the side of the road, in the dark, with no means of communication... Which, does sound kind of bad when I say it out loud, but obviously it all worked out okay for you.”

The man defiantly kept his mouth shut.

“We made a lot of noise,” Lucy pointed out. “Should we move?”

“Nah.” Rufus didn’t take his eyes off him. “No one is gonna call the cops, and they wouldn’t come anyway unless they were specifically asked to. That’s how it is when you own the neighborhood. Am I right?”

There was no misinterpreting the man’s facial expressions. 

Lorena smiled something sinister. “We have all the time in the world.” 

“I’ll hold him.” Dave moved to grab his wrists. “Rufus, you search his pockets.”

The Rittengoon resisted, of course, but Dave was strong and towered over him. Rufus patted him down, only finding a wallet in his back pocket.

“Let’s see,” Rufus started to rummage through it, pulling out a license. “Daniel Jefferson. Lives, oh, not too far from where I got my first part time job, actually.”

“Here.” Lucy gestured to a nearby work bench. “Lay everything out, see if you or Flynn recognize anything.”

Dave kept an eye on Jefferson while they laid out every single scrap of paper that was in the man’s wallet. They looked at each one closely, front and back. Making comments on anything that might even be remotely related to… anything. But it was all standard junk that gathers in men’s wallets over time.

“Are you sure nothing looks familiar?” Rufus asked Lorena again.

She gave a frustrated sigh. “I would have said something. I want to know why things changed too.”

“Maybe…” Lucy was thinking. “Maybe something to do with whatever we interrupted here? Those crates outside?”

“No.” Rufus rarely argued with Lucy, but this time he had to follow his gut. He turned around to face Jefferson. “You’re the key to this, I know it. So tell me where you were going that night”

“What?” the man startled, having not been paying attention, apparently.

“Where were you heading when I ran you off the road?” Rufus reiterated.

“I already said I’m not going to tell you anything,” the agent continued his defiant streak. “So you might as well kill me now.”

“Okay,” Lorena said almost conversationally, putting the duffle bag on the ground and rummaging through it.

“Flynn?” Lucy spoke the name like a question.

Lorena pulled out a grenade and some other supplies, looking at them like Rufus might examine a hard drive and loosing wiring. “Don’t worry, I can set up a delayed trigger to give us time to clear out. I mean, we could just shoot him, but this would be more satisfying.”

“Flynn!” this came more forcefully from Dave.

“He’s obviously stalling for time,” Lorena said as she stood up, explosives in hand, “hoping one of his Rittenfriends will show up. So if it’s time he wants, then it’s time we take away from him.”

Dave gave a frustrated breath, “You cannot be serious.”

Everyone, even Jefferson, looked to Lucy who was clearly the one in charge. The woman thought it over for a moment, then nodded slightly at Lorena who moved towards Jefferson without hesitation.

“Okay.” Lorena removed the safety pin from her grenade, but held the lever down. “There has got to be a rubber band around here somewhere for me to make a delayed trigger out of. Or, actually, you know what, just how strong of a jaw do you have?” She reached forward and grabbed his chin. “How much can you open up?”

Jefferson recoiled, not exactly pushing at Lorena because no one wanted her dropping a live grenade. “You’re insane.”

“No,” Lorena replied darkly, grabbing his neck, nails digging in. “I am just really tired of Rittenhouse and all your shit. You murdered my husband, and my _daughter_. I could kill every last one of you and it wouldn’t be enough.”

Rufus wasn’t sure if Lorena was just being over dramatic to scare the man, or being completely honest. Either way, he was more scared in that moment with Lorena than he had ever been with Flynn… and she wasn’t even trying to kill him. He thought maybe he should say something, but he also wanted Jiya back. What lengths would he go to for that? Would he let Lorena torture a man right in front of him?

“Someone want to help hold his head while I shove this down his throat?” Lorena asked, and now he had to answer his own question.

This wasn’t his timeline. This wasn’t supposed to be the timeline. They weren’t supposed to be there. None of this was supposed to happen. It was a blip, an error in the coding that he needed to correct. 

And besides, if he did fix it, then this man would likely still be alive, so… were there really any consequences for his action? He would still know what he did.

After an agonizing few seconds, he started to step forward. Now he knew what Flynn felt like.

Whatever it takes.

Rufus stumbled as he realized Dave and Lucy also started to move forward. And not to stop Lorena. They glanced between each other, realizing they had all done the math on this and came up with the same result. 

Dave gave a resigned sigh. “Rufus, hold his arms, I’ll hold the rest of him down. Lucy, pinch his nose.”

“They teach you waterboarding in Delta?” Rufus asked, quipping to cover his anxiety and nausea. 

“Among other things.”

“Hello, live grenade,” Lorena reminded them.

“Right.” Rufus cleared his throat and they all moved to hold the man down so she could do her work.

“Open sesame,” she said, jangling the explosive.

“A meeting!!” Jefferson shouted.

Lucy threw her hand up to pause Lorena. “A meeting? What kind of meeting?”


	12. Chapter 12

**Now**

By the time Flynn, Lucy, and the others got back from protecting the Explorer 1 launch in 1958, it was very late in the present. Christopher said there would be at least one more bedroom made tomorrow, but tonight they’d have to make due again. Lucy and Amy holed up in Connor’s room, the women still having years upon years of things to talk about.

Flynn needed to talk to Lorena again, but he had to make a plan first. He had a responsibility to at least try to help his wife recover, but it would never work if she didn’t want to help herself. He’d do what he could, but he made himself a soft limit, and a hard limit, to walk away. He only hoped he never reached them.

The next morning he was conscripted to cover the Lifeboat with a tarp. Emma never launched two days in a row, so hopefully that wouldn’t change. The workers who came in to cut the wall between the two closets would be none the wiser as to what was going on in the facility.

Flynn watched as Lorena was approached by Christopher, early in the morning.

“Lorena,” the agent got her attention. “I understand you’re a structural engineer.”

She looked up from where she was idly reading a book she borrowed from Jiya. Well, Jiya had left it on the table after she finished it. “A lifetime ago.”

“I need these workers in and out today,” the agent told her. “I’d like you to supervise them to make sure no time costly mistakes are made.”

Lorena just stared at her.

“I’m not really asking,” Christopher clarified. 

With an annoyed sigh, Lorena stood up and followed the agent to where the men were setting up. She started asking question and clarifications. The Sapper was used to men discounting her on sight, and by the time they were finished, they realized they had been mistaken.

“Alright,” Christopher said as they started to gather for dinner. “We have another single bedroom. It’ll be awhile before I figure out how to get another one in here. So let’s settle on a permanent arrangement for now.”

“Me and Jiya are staying put,” Rufus said, and no one argued it because it did make sense.

“I wouldn’t mind my room back,” Connor added. “Just thought I’d put that out there.”

Everyone tried not to be obvious as they looked around. Jiya and Rufus needed a double. Lucy and Amy could use one as well. Connor didn’t need one, though he did have the most personal possessions, most of it being technical equipment. Wyatt no longer needed a double. 

But they were all asking themselves if Flynn and Lorena wanted a double.

“I’ll stay out on the sofa,” Lorena said to put them out of their misery. “It’ll give me motivation to help you figure out how to build in another room.”

“You’d do that?” Christopher asked her.

“Right after I sort out the bathroom,” Lorena replied. “Pretty sure I can cut in more drainage, junction off the pipes. I’ll have to see the main intakes to make sure I can keep the water pressure up, but… I can put in some privacy walls and turn it into a proper dorm facility. At least one more shower, a couple more toilets.”

Everyone just stared at her. 

“I hate waiting for the bathroom,” she explained blankly.

“Scary Flynn is my new favorite Flynn,” Rufus informed everyone.

Flynn gave him a very dour expression.

With that settled, it was decided that Wyatt would get the new single room. Lucy was fine with moving into Wyatt’s old room, since all of his things… reminders of him and Jessica, would be removed. This way Connor could go back to his room and they wouldn’t have to deal with moving all his stuff.

Everyone got drafted for the move, getting everyone settled so they could all go to bed that night in their assigned locations.

“You’ve never been subtle,” he heard Lorena say as he was getting ready for bed. 

He had left the door ajar, expecting her to come tell him off. At least she was still predictable in that respect. It was a good sign, as far as he was concerned.

“You told Christopher to have me help with the reno,” she said, walking in, but leaving the door open. 

“You’re good at what you do.” He wasn’t going to apologize for it.

“I don’t need to fix a wall,” she was harsh, her jaw tight. “I need to save our daughter.”

“And then what?”

The question hit her so hard he could see the recoil.

He took a breath and moved around her to close the door as he measured his words. “I once thought the same way. That my own life didn’t matter because there wasn’t a point to it other than to destroy Rittenhouse. I could never be a father to Iris again. Once the mission was over, that was it.”

“I failed her,” she bit out, turning towards him.

“Failing her, would be giving up.” Flynn stepped closer, putting emphasis on his words. “We haven’t given up on saving her. Every time I go back, every new change in the timeline, every piece of intel we get, I run the numbers and I know, one day, I’ll have the answer.”

“I could go back—” 

“No,” he cut her off sharply. He wasn’t usually inclined to do so, but this was hardly normal circumstances. “We can’t give up on Iris, and we can’t give up on ourselves. I’m not letting you throw your life away.”

“But if my other self lives—”

“Christ, Lorena.” He was frustrated, and he wanted her to see it. She knew him, she knew his moods and what they meant. “You are alive, _right now_. You always told me that we get to choose what to do with the opportunities put in front of us. But do you really think you were saved just so you could sacrifice yourself?”

“What other option is there?” she said like she believed it. “You don’t seem to have any plans. It’s been _five years_ , and we’ve solved _nothing_. I spent the last two years in prison. What’s your excuse?”

“I almost erased Iris,” he admitted, his throat dry. “I went back and saved my brother, not caring if that meant I’d never be born.”

“Wait, what?” Lorena blinked a few times, as if she came out of a haze. “You saved your brother… your half-brother?”

“Gabriel, yes.” He put his hands on his hips and looked down for a moment. He wouldn’t be ashamed of what he did, but, “It was reckless of me. Mama could have declined the job in Croatia. Without me, no Iris. But at least you’d still be alive.”

“You… you almost erased our daughter?” 

He looked back up at her and saw a myriad of emotions. From fear to anger and all the confusion in between. “Yes. Because I had the same thoughts processes going through my head that are in yours right now. And I know how hard it is to get off that train once it starts going, but you need to. I will _not_ formulate any plans with you until you’re thinking straight.”

It was blunt and direct, it had to be. The truth hurt, but it needed to be said, even if it broke whatever might be left of their marriage. He would be the bad guy if it got Lorena on the path of recovery.

“How,” she asked into the quiet. “How did you get off that train?”

“Lucy.” Flynn wouldn’t—couldn’t—lie to her. “She believed in me, like I believe in you now.”

Lorena’s eyes drifted to the floor and for the life of him he couldn’t read her. They used to be so in sync before. Like… like what he had with Lucy.

“You can be with her if you want to,” Lorena spoke with only a slight shake to her voice. “I won’t get in the way.”

“It won’t change how much I care about you,” he told her firmly. “It won’t change how much I want to save Iris. It’s something we need to do together.”

She continued to stand there, staring down at their feet. Her eyes drifted closed and he knew to give her time to process everything. He wanted to pull her into a hug, comfort her because he knew she was cracking down on the inside. But there was still that burning desire to do more, that typhoon of feelings that wouldn’t settle, and he wasn’t going to risk it.

“I should go.” Lorena lifted her head and barely looked at him as she walked past him towards the door.

“You can be a mother again,” he said as her hand touched the door handle. “It’s not too late.”

“Did you forget?” She opened the door. “You were always the better parent.”

She disappeared into the hallway and he tilted his head back, taking a deep breath. This was only the beginning, and as beginnings go, it was better than he could have hoped for.


	13. Chapter 13

**Now**

“Did I just see Scary Flynn walk past with a sledgehammer?” 

“Yes,” Flynn answered Rufus as he sat at one of the kitchen tables, reading a book and drinking some tea.

“Okay then,” the young man nodded, as if he was stuck between surprised but not terribly so. “Has she always been like this?”

That was a loaded question that Flynn found tough to answer. Yes, his wife had always been the ‘Scary’ one in the relationship. She had built up a rather thick skin due to her time in the military. Her natural affinity for explosives didn’t help much in trying to paint her as anything less than dangerous. And while she believed in forgiveness, she also believed in righteous retribution. 

So, in the end… “She’s always been a complicated person.”

“You do like ‘em complicated,” Rufus mumbled, heading to the fridge.

Flynn resisted the urge to ask what the man meant by that, but he already knew. His dynamic with Lucy hadn’t changed a whole lot. It hadn’t changed at all on missions. The only difference was no more of Lucy staying overnight in his room, she in the bed and him in the chair. 

Would they still be doing that if only Amy had returned? The sisters had a lot to catch up on, a lot of bonding to do. They weren’t the person the other left behind. Lucy hadn’t seen Amy in five years, that last moment ignorance of time travel before she was erased. Amy quietly confessed that her Lucy was a lot harder, a lot more war torn, and a lot less happy.

Also, while Amy knew they were half-sisters, she didn’t know Lucy was a Rittenhouse descendant and that made things… awkward.

So yes, the sisters shared a room and talked well into the night. But eventually that would wear down as they got comfortable and familiar again. Would that see Lucy visiting him again, missing his presence as he did hers? Or would she stay away, not because Lorena would object, but because it was simpler that way?

Lorena was starting to show signs of recovery and his feelings for her were still in turmoil. There was no telling where they would end up on the other side of this storm.

Sledgehammer.

He knew what was happening, and decided he’d go see if she needed any help. Not only was it the polite thing to do, but it would be good to do something together that didn’t involve talking about Iris.

There had to be a way to save their daughter and keep Rittenhouse from getting the Mothership. Maybe if he stopped looking for a moment, an answer would reveal itself, like misplaced house keys. Lorena returning from a different timeline certainly hadn’t been on his original list of options. There was so much for him to rethink.

Flynn put his book on the table and headed down the hallway towards the bathroom. 

“I gave ya’ll twenty-four hour notice,” he heard Lorena say as he approached. “The bathroom is mine for the next two hours.”

Indeed, there was a note on the door stating that Lorena would be doing preliminary work on the bathroom renovation. The building plans Christopher managed to source were fifty years old and could only be taken as guidelines. Her goal today would be to break up some of the floor to see where all the pipes were going. She assured them the toilet and shower would still be working afterwards, just don’t be idiots and fall in the hole.

“I don’t need the bathroom,” Wyatt responded, causing Flynn to pause just outside. “I wanted to talk to you, actually.”

“Really?” she replied with annoyance. “I’m about relieve some stress on this concrete floor, can it wait?”

“I just thought you’d like to know a few things,” Wyatt said, “about your husband.”

Flynn edged to the door and listened. 

“Garcia, Lucy, blah blah blah.” Lorena sighed. “Good talk.”

Wyatt let out a huff of breath. “You should see them together on missions. Aren’t you concerned that… you know…?”

“Finish your sentence.” Lorena was no doubt giving him the same look she used to put blusterous commanders in their place when they thought they knew more about engineering than their Sapper.

“They… they could be having an affair.”

“Projecting much?” she said drolly, then made a noise to stop him from talking. “If you hadn’t noticed, I’ve been dead for five years. Garcia is a widow, he can do whatever he wants, with whomever he wants.”

It felt like a stab in the heart when she said those words. Yes, he had been widowed, but he never stopped thinking of Lorena as his wife… then or now. This realization struck him, putting one of the pieces of his complicated emotions in check. Did Lorena think of herself as a widow? And not someone who had been separated from their spouse for several years? She wasn’t wearing her wedding ring anymore, was that actually by choice?

Wyatt seemed confused and agitated, just by the little noises he was making. “You lost your husband in your timeline, don’t you want him back?”

Flynn held his breath and inched even closer, surprised at the intensity that he wanted an answer to that question.

“I want my _life_ back,” she said harshly. “I want to go back to before that night, before Rittenhouse destroyed everything. _That’s_ what I want, but I’m adult enough to know that it is _never_ going to happen.”

Her confession nearly reduced him to tears. She was wrong, but she was also right.

“Oh, and Wyatt,” she said, Flynn getting the impression the man had been turning to leave since he had no response to Lorena’s declaration. “I heard all about what you did, to Lucy, when your wife came back.”

“That doesn’t concern you.”

“Oh, but it does,” she replied lightly. “You’re a controlling type, I see them all the time. You may genuinely have feelings for Lucy, but only those feelings matter. You didn’t care if you hurt Lucy, you just wanted what made you feel good.”

“That’s not—” Wyatt squeaked and it was likely Lorena _casually_ branded a weapon at him.

“I don’t like men like you,” she said darkly. “You make it difficult on everyone around you, catering to your fucking ego, which I won’t do because it’s annoying and exhausting. So grow up. Or I might just kill you. Again.”

“Are you threating me?”

“Honey, I don’t make threats, I make promises.”

Rufus came down the hall, heading towards his room. Flynn stood up and acted like he hadn’t been eavesdropping on the conversation. Rufus was too engrossed in what he was looking at to even notice.

“What’s that?” Flynn asked him, moving away from the door.

The scientist mumbled off some stuff that went over Flynn’s head, but it did the job of giving him cover for when Wyatt came fuming out of the bathroom. Flynn looked up at him innocently, as if he hadn’t heard everything. 

Wyatt glared, but said nothing. 

“What’s up with him?” Rufus asked, probably rhetorically.

Flynn smiled, lightly chuckling. “I think he just learned why you call Lorena ‘Scary Flynn.’”

The next thing they heard was a large crack. They looked into the bathroom and found Lorena expertly using the sledgehammer to break up the concrete. She made sure the weight was in her knees, got the blunt instrument high in the air, then conserved her own energy by letting gravity do the work for her. Like cutting wood, only louder.

Rufus gave an impressed hum, then patted Flynn’s shoulder and walked off.

He leaned against the frame and watched her work. He was reminded of the time they redid the back patio, putting in a woodfire strove, grill, firepit, and lights. They had to get an electrician to do some of the install. Lorena could have done it, but she wasn’t licensed and there were laws to consider. The man spent the whole time complimenting Flynn on the work, like the even concrete and the solid masonry.

The look on the man’s face when he said Lorena had done all herself, he just paid for it, oh, and carried supplies from the SUV. 

The house was eventually resold in 2015, probably after a good reno, removing the blood and bullet holes. He hoped the new owners kept the patio and didn’t tear it down. Lorena had put a lot of love into building it. For days her hands had been swollen enough that she hadn’t bothered to even attempt to wear her wedding ring, instead putting it on a chain.

Lorena paused to check her progress, shifting away loose chunks. Glancing up, she spotted him. She pulled down the N95 mask she was wearing to avoid breathing in concrete dusk. “Need something?”

“Just making sure you didn’t.”

“About done here,” she said, throwing a chunk to the side. “But, ah, I could use some help with the snake cam in a minute.”

Christopher had borrowed a snake cam, which was basically an endoscope, but for buildings instead of people. Military spec ops teams used them to see into rooms or inside things you might not want to move. Plumbers used them to look down pipes and into cavities.

“You want me to guide?” he asked, straightening up.

“Yeah, I’ll watch the feed, tell you were to go.”

“Sounds like a plan.”


	14. Chapter 14

**Now**

“We should repaint the whole bathroom,” Jiya commented as she poured more sealant into her tray.

“Not until after I fix the ventilation,” Lorena explained, measuring out some cuts on the plywood. “That’s going to take even more work, but I want to get it up and running.”

Lorena explained to the group that she’d block off three toilets, like a public restroom, and install one more shower. She’d isolate the showers with cinderblock walls, but that would be too much bulk for separating the toilets. Christopher wouldn’t let her buy pre-fab metal walls and doors because it cost too much, and wasn’t exactly a generic order.

“That’s why I’m doing these first, so they can cure and the smell fade off before I install.” Sealed and painted plywood would have to do. But they couldn’t cut and paint down in the bunker, so thanks to some camouflage netting, and some rented tools, they were up top, in the open air.

“This is a bit depressing,” Rufus sighed from where he was helping Jiya paint the walls Lorena had already cut. 

“How so?” Jiya asked.

“Don’t get me wrong, I am loving the idea of not having to wait forever to use the bathroom,” he defended himself, moving his roller brush through the paint, “but doing this kinda feels like admitting we’re going to be down here for a very long time.”

“If I put in all this work,” Lorena said, making her last mark, “and we defeat Rittenhouse three days later, I’ll be okay with it.”

They continued, the team members were taking turns at helping. It kept any one person from getting tired out in case Emma launched, and also made it go faster. Lorena found comfort in the precision of building something, and annoyance in Garcia being right.

There was still a cold, dark, gapping void in her from the loss of Iris… but, just maybe, she didn’t have to live there.

“Lunch time!” Lucy called out as she approached their little encampment, she was carrying two plastic sacks. She put them on a saw-horse table and pulled bottles of water out of one, and wrapped sandwiches out of the other.

“You, ah,” Rufus cleared his throat. “You didn’t make these, did you?”

“No, Amy did,” she assured them. “That’s why I’m the one that had to lug them up the ladder.”

Lorena grabbed a sandwich. “You could have used the dumbwaiter system I set up.”

“I would have probably broken it,” Lucy replied flatly. “Tech isn’t my strong suit.”

“That’s why she has us,” Jiya said with her mouthful.

“And I am forever grateful for that.” Lucy smiled, grabbing one of the extra sandwiches. “It’s such a lovely day, I think I’ll sit up here with you guys. I think it’s my turn on the roster next anyway.”

Rufus and Jiya grabbed their stuff and wandered off to set together in a nice cosey spot. Lorena didn’t feel jealously, but she did remember back when her and Garcia were dating. The stolen moments on a military base, finding that one spot that felt the least like they were in a warzone. She never used to think of it as simpler times…

“You going to finish today?” Lucy asked, sitting down on a folding chair. Her question hadn’t been accusatorial in any way, just genuine curiosity because they had to cut and paint three bathroom stalls worth of wood.

“We’ll want to do another coat of paint later,” Lorena answered, taking a seat across from her. “This is more sealant than anything. Keep out moisture to avoid mold growth. Then we’ll want to want to paint them to look pretty.”

“Pretty is good.” Lucy smiled and took a bite of sandwich. They sat quietly for a few moments, eating and enjoying the nice breeze. “This is really good for moral, by the way. I mean, right now we’re still stuck with the one toilet and shower, but knowing that will change soon…”

“Like I said,” Lorena shrugged, “I hate waiting for the bathroom.”

“I hear that,” Lucy tipped her bottle of water towards her. 

Lorena wanted to snap and tell the woman she had no idea. After she gave birth to Iris, it felt like everything down there had been pulled out and stuck back in upside down. She had been downright embarrassed by her constant need to go the bathroom. And utterly furious that no one had warned her about all the… stuff… that would be coming out for days after.

Not that she wouldn’t have had Iris had she known… but some warning that it was normal would have been nice.

She wanted to scream, about so many things, but she was adult enough to realize it was just that. Scream and scream until the world made sense. Lucy didn’t deserve to be on the receiving end of it, she hadn’t done anything wrong. The woman was only trying to be sympathetic, and Lorena’s anger was needing a target.

Lorena caught herself before she let the anger and frustration win this round.

“I heard about what you said,” Lucy spoke after a few more minutes of silence, “to Wyatt.”

“Garcia tell you?” Lorena had realized he listened in while they were working the snake cam. He didn’t say anything about it directly, but the way he steered the conversation made it obvious after a bit.

Lucy blinked, crinkled her brow. “Ah, no. Jiya. Wyatt complained to Rufus, who told Jiya, who told me.”

“Oh…”

“A bit of a game of telephone,” Lucy admitted. “Did you really threaten to kill him if he tried anything with me?”

“Yes,” she replied bluntly, and when Lucy’s eyebrows shot up, she explained, “In my job as Sapper, I got moved around a lot. Brought into bases and encampments here and there. I often got to babysit hardcases who were being punished with ditchdigging when I needed a damned excavator.”

“Flynn told me that’s how you two met,” Lucy smiled at the memory. Though Lorena didn’t know if the smile related to the contents of the story, or the situation around which he told it.

“Yeah, well,” Lorena cleared her throat. “There was never any need for me to be polite and keep the peace because I wouldn’t be around for too long. When I saw guys doing reckless behavior, I said something. Because if they were pulling that shit now, who knows what they would do in the field. And that’s how people get killed. It’s how he got Rufus killed, from what I gathered.”

Lucy opened her mouth as if she was going to defend him, but then closed it again.

“See, that right there.” Lorena pointed at her. “You go into the field with him all the time, and when you do that, you have to have a level of trust. And maybe you can trust him when it comes to a fight, so you imprint that on your downtime. Because you need to make sure you can continue to trust him.”

“That’s an astute observation,” Lucy eventually replied, then tried not to look over at her friends. “Though trusting him is how we lost Rufus.”

“So why didn’t you kick him off the team after that?” Lorena asked.

“It’s… complicated,” Lucy sighed.

“Jess,” Lorena replied knowingly. 

“Yeah…” Lucy gave a tired smile. “But he’s getting better. I think his hostility earlier was less to do with me, and more to do with you and Flynn. He sees you two doing everything right that he did wrong.”

“Doesn’t mean we’ll fare any better,” Lorena said, trying to keep the bitterness out of her mouth. “Just means we don’t hurt those around us.”

Lucy frowned at her. “You almost sound defeatist.”

“We were dead to each other for years,” Lorena replied flatly. “Our daughter was murdered in front of us. There is a lot of pain there to overcome, and I’m a realist.”

“You’ll never succeed if you don’t have hope.” There was such a surety and strength in her voice that it wanted to make Lorena angry just so she wouldn’t have to accept it. “I’m not saying you two will definitely… make it work again. But you definitely won’t if you give up before you start.”

Lorena was quiet for a moment, judging the woman’s intentions. She tried to be impartial about it, to not let her own complicated emotions cloud her thoughts. “I’ve accepted that Garcia and I may never… That his heart might belong to another now. I won’t foolishly chase something that isn’t there.”

“Is that really what you want?” 

“I believe so.” Lorena shrugged, glancing over to where Rufus and Jiya were canoodling together. “Feelings are complicated.”

“They are at that,” Lucy agreed quietly.

“Garcia cares about you.” Lorena turned back to her. “I’m glad he had someone in his corner.”

“I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you,” the woman replied without hesitation or misgiving, so much so it stunned Lorena, making her blink in surprise. “Amy told me, told me everything, really. You tried just as hard to make me see as Flynn did, and I listened, but I didn’t fight hard enough. I don’t know if it was because I lost Wyatt. He is my friend, it just never should have gone past that.” Lucy shook her head slightly and sighed. “There’s also Amy’s influence, and Dave, or your own actions, or all the above in some manner. But knowing the reason doesn’t change the fact that I left you in that prison after taking away your chance to save your daughter.”

Lorena looked away, her eyes starting to mist up, tears trying to escape the corners of her eyes.

“Together, or apart,” Lucy continued, “you and Flynn deserve happiness. Don’t ever think otherwise.”

“Do you ever take your own advice?” she asked her, perhaps sharper than she meant to.

Lucy smiled at her, an exhausted kind of gesture. “What do you think?”


	15. Chapter 15

**Now**

Amy was snuggled up to Lucy like she would when they were kids. Only Amy’s hair didn’t smell of strawberries, but of the eucalyptus shampoo that was available to them. It was a reminder of how things were different now.

Lucy worried that Amy had actually downgraded siblings. After all, she didn’t save Amy from non-existence, her other self did. Not only that, the other Lucy was able to make such a hard decision that affected everyone, and it ended up being the right decision. Lucy didn’t know if she could have done it… not without help anyway. 

“This is going to take time to get completely used to,” Amy admitted, “but you’re still my big sister.”

“I always will be.” Lucy patted her hair and they just held each other for a while.

“You smile more,” Amy eventually said.

Lucy frowned. “I do?” 

“Yeah.” Amy sat up so she could look at her. “The other Lucy was so serious and sad all the time. I was always trying to keep her spirits up. I… don’t have to do that with you.”

This confession almost made her cry. “I’m sure she appreciated your efforts.”

Amy nodded, perhaps more to herself. Then she glanced at Lucy curiously. “It’s Tall Flynn, you know that, right?”

“What?” Lucy nervously said.

“When you two come back from a mission,” Amy continued, “it’s like you hold each other up. Keep each other from drowning in the sadness.”

Lucy blushed, trying to hide it but she never was able to hide from Amy.

“Do you sleep with him?” her sister asked. “On the missions?”

“What?” Lucy’s head snapped up. “No. Of course not. It’s…it’s not like that.”

“But you want it to be.” Amy shrugged, grabbing one of the pillows to clutch, resting her chin on it. “Admit it, Lucy, you are in love with him.”

Even if it wasn’t her sister, could she lie and say that she wasn’t? 

A few weeks ago, Lucy didn’t know what she felt. Her dalliance with Wyatt was ill considered, based on feelings she thought she had… feelings that were surface only with no real foundations. Maybe they could have built something, dug down deep, but the man’s actions when his wife was brought back ruined any chance of that happening.

But with Flynn, those feelings began as foundations, sturdy and load bearing. They began building their relationship on top of them. In that respect, it all kind of snuck up on her. She didn’t really realize just how much she needed him until…

Until it was too late?

“What are the chances that the two men I get involved with,” Lucy mirthlessly chuckled. “Both of their wives return from the dead?”

“Definitely broke a record there,” Amy replied wryly. “But this time, it’s different, isn’t it?”

Lucy sighed again. “Yeah, it is.”

“You know that Flynn has practically given her blessing for you and Tall Flynn to get together?” Amy asked bluntly, a trait of hers which hadn’t changed. “It won’t be like Wyatt and Jessica.”

In some ways, it was worse. “If you hadn’t noticed, but Lorena is hurting, badly. She may not even be thinking clearly right now. It’s not the best time to be making any kind of decisions, let alone of that type.”

Amy raised her brow. “You’re afraid she’ll turn into a vindictive bitch?” 

“Oh, god, no,” Lucy scoffed. “Lorena would stand by her word. And so would Flynn. But Flynn and I have talked, a lot. He has a responsibility, to help Lorena get through this, to recover from her trauma like he did. That needs to be his focus right now.”

“You’re more like my Lucy than you know,” Amy nearly laughed. “She was defending Flynn too, even after everything she did. What is it with you and Flynn’s?”

“They were pushed into this, by Rittenhouse,” Lucy slightly raised her voice, the first time since her sister returned. “Because Rittenhouse destroyed them. They’ve been fighting on the right side the whole time. And we can’t stop Rittenhouse without him… them.”

“I get it, Luce.” Amy raised her hands in surrender. “You’re in love with Tall Flynn, like, really in love with him. But it seems like all three of you are too damn noble for your own good.”

Lucy wanted to argue but found it difficult. Amy was right, of course. There was nothing stopping her from walking to Flynn’s room right now. Nothing keeping her from kissing him and pushing him down onto his bed. Nothing except for the fact that she wouldn’t put either of the Flynn’s in that situation. Not while Lorena was recovering and adjusting to this timeline. 

To being alive by cheating death while her daughter was still cold in her grave.

“In a strange way,” Lucy said softly, “nothing has actually changed. When Flynn and I are out in the field, we just… connect in a way that transcends the need for titles, you know?”

“Like you’ve been married for years?” Amy asked.

“Something like that,” she admitted when she thought about it. 

“Well,” Amy readjusted herself to get comfortable. “At least he’s not acting like Wyatt did, from what I’ve been told.”

“Oh, god no, miles different.” Lucy lightly laughed in relief. “Flynn, he’s… he’s everything Wyatt isn’t. Sometimes I wonder what I saw in him.”

“Eh, life and death situations can create a sense of false-intimacy.” Amy shrugged, and Lucy tilted her head at her. “I did some research, okay? I haven’t gone on any missions, and I can’t leave the bunker, so, I got time on my hands.”

“False-intimacy, sounds about right.” Lucy shook her head. “Oh, ah, did you want to go on missions?”

“Well, as you know, I’m a badass,” Amy said very seriously. “Dave and I would tag team and beat the shit out of Rittengoons.”

“I kinda want to see that.” Lucy smiled, trying to picture it. Then a thought came to her. “Do you miss him? Dave?”

“A bit, yeah.” Amy tried to shrug it off. “He was a good friend. The paladin of the team. I asked Christopher, she said he’s doing good, off saving the world from other threats. Blissfully unaware of all this.” She twirled her fingers in the air.

“You know…” Lucy almost didn’t want to venture there, afraid of what Amy might say. “You legally don’t exist. No one is looking for you. No one will recognize you, not like Lorena. Denise can get you some ID, and you can go… start a fresh life out there without ever having to think about Rittenhouse ever again.”

“Tempting,” Amy agreed with a nod of her head. “But I’d rather be here, with my sister, my love-dumb sister who clearly needs me.”

Lucy smiled, unable not to laugh at that. She pulled Amy into a hug.

Ten seconds later, a tickle fight broke out.


	16. Chapter 16

**Then**

“You’re back,” Amy said as Lucy came down the ladder, followed by Lorena, Dave, and Rufus. “And no one is dead.”

“There are some Rittenhouse agents who would beg to differ,” Lorena said as she reached the bottom.

“Can we please lock her back up?” Dave asked, though there didn’t seem to be any real bite to the request.

Christopher got out in front, arms crossed. “Did you find out why the timeline changed?”

“Yes.” Rufus couldn’t cover how relieved he felt. “The dude I ran off the road, Jefferson his name is, well, he was on the way to a meeting. Because he never made it, he got demoted and sent to Chicago, instead of a primo spot in California.”

“I see.” Christopher nodded. “Someone else got the position, and they chose to wait a day longer to attack the Flynn’s.”

“Which means,” Rufus was downright giddy, “all I have to do is go back and make sure he gets to the meeting in time. He gets the promotion to California, and then he can… order the hit out on the Flynn family a day earlier and I really shouldn’t be happy about that.”

“No, you shouldn’t,” Lorena deadpanned.

“Man, I’m sorry, I really am, but you know exactly how I feel right now,” he glanced down the hall where Jiya laid in a coma. “That woman is the love of my life, she’s my everything. I have a chance to save her, just like she saved me.”

“This isn’t just about you,” Amy pointed out with a touch of anger. “You change things, I disappear.”

“Exactly.” Lucy edged closer to her sister. “How can you be sure that this isn’t the right timeline?”

“Because it’s not,” he snapped, then took a second to chill. “Cahill is in prison and we have Rittenhouse on the defense now. That’s because of Jiya, Connor, and Wyatt. They’re all alive and well in my timeline, kicking ass with the help of… Less Scary Flynn. And… and Denise, you and your mother have a great relationship, she loves your kids, spoils them even.”

The agent blinked. “Wait, what?” 

“Long story, starts with Reagan getting shot and ends with Lucy and Jiya convincing you to tell your mom you’re a lesbian.” With Christopher thoroughly blue-screening at that, Rufus turned to Dave. “And you, to be honest, I don’t know what you’re doing. But you’re not here, you’re not being put through all of this. You’re out there with Delta, saving the world from other threats.” 

“Still erased.” Amy was stuck on that point of contention.

“I know, but Lucy hasn’t stopped trying to bring you back.” He turned to Lorena. “And Flynn hasn’t stopped trying to find a way to save you.”

Lorena looked blankly at him. “Bold of you to assume I have any say in what this group does.”

Okay, she had him there. 

“The journal!” Of course, that was the key to all of this, wasn’t it? “It knew this would happen and gave us a way to fix it. This isn’t the timeline of the journal, is it? It must have talked about my timeline.”

The woman opened her mouth, but stalled.

“You can’t trust the journal,” Lucy nearly yelled, frustration getting the better of her. “It didn’t warn about Emma, or Wyatt, or even Amy in your timeline. It’s a relic of timelines we’ve blown right past. Who’s to say we don’t move past yours?”

“Everyone,” Christopher spoke in her mom-voice. “It’s late, we’ve all been awake for a long time. Get some sleep, we can talk about it in the morning when we are well rested. Neither timeline is going anywhere.”

There was a general rumbling of agreement, things were getting heated and Rufus hadn’t showered in longer than he wanted to admit.

“I guess I’m going back to prison?” Lorena asked, almost comically.

“No,” Lucy spoke before Christopher could say anything. “This affects you, just as much as Amy. You deserve to be part of the discussion.”

It looked like there might be an argument, but one look at Lucy pretty much silenced that.

“Permission to handcuff her?” Dave asked.

“Kinky,” Lorena smirked. “I do like ‘em tall.”

“If Flynn was going to kill you,” Christopher said, “then she would have done so already.”

“See, she gets me.”

After a few more grumblings, everyone went to settle in for the night, to rest up before making a literal life-altering decision. He went into Jiya’s medical room. She was still sleeping, a beauty that wasn’t going to wake up unless he did something. 

If he snuck off and took the Lifeboat, changed things, then he would have Amy and Lorena’s blood on his hands. Could he ever look Jiya in the eyes again with that hanging over him? Would she ever forgive him for trading their lives for hers?

He had no answers, no good ones at least. This was a question for the group. They had to make the decision of which timeline to keep. 

He just hoped he could convince them that his was the right one.


	17. Chapter 17

**Now**

“What is this?” Lorena asked, glancing up from the kitchen table where she was sketching the layout of the bunker. 

“It’s a present,” Rufus said, flanked by Jiya, everyone else hovering nearby. “Can’t you see the bow?”

There was indeed a sparkling silver bow, sat on top a box wrapped in _Star Wars_ holiday paper. “Yes, I can see the bow.”

Jiya grabbed the gift. With one hand she pulled away Lorena’s sketch, replacing it with the shoe box sized item. “It’s a thank you gift.”

“A thank you gift?” Lorena glanced around with her eyes only, looking for Garcia, who was smart enough to stay in her blind spot.

“For fixing up the bathroom,” Jiya explained, though perhaps a touch annoyed she had to. “It’s been really nice these last few days to wake up and not have to elbow my way to try to pee.”

“Ah,” Lorena looked down at the gift and tried not to blush. When was the last time anyone had ever thanked her for something like this? It was work she could have done in her sleep, earning her a ‘good job, here’s the next’ from her boss in the Army Corps. “Thank you,” she managed to stutter out.

“Open it,” Jiya had gotten over her annoyance and was now youthfully giddy.

Lorena tentatively removed the wrapping, very neatly revealing that it was indeed a shoe box. Rufus picked up the unripped paper.

“She’s always been like that,” Garcia told Rufus, and she finally saw him as the rest of the team approached the table.

“Too many explosives training drills,” Lorena explained as she checked for tape around the edges of the lid. “Anything can be a bomb.”

“And back to Scary Flynn.” Rufus sat the paper down.

Lorena popped the lid off and the first thing she saw was a splash of orangey red. It was a bottle of one of her favorite hot sauces. She picked it up and marveled. “Lord, it’s been… years since I’ve had this.” 

“They asked me what you’d like,” Garcia said with a smile. “First thing that came to mind was LeBeau’s but there is no way we were getting that from New Orleans, they still don’t ship. But Etienne’s is local.”

“I could drink this by the bottle.” Lorena nearly laughed, almost wanting to cry. It was just a bottle of hot sauce in return for fixing a bathroom because _she_ was tired of elbowing people to get in there.

“There’s something else,” Jiya nudged the box.

Lorena found a nice bottle of bourbon and checked its color in the light. “This… was really thoughtful, thank you.”

She wanted to be angry, at Garcia. He was being a little heavy handed with the ‘be one of the team’ tripe. She didn’t need a team, she didn’t need to cut wood and run PVC, she needed her daughter alive. That was the priority. That’s what they needed to focus on!

But damn did it feel nice to be appreciated for her hard work. She built something that made their lives better. That was all she ever really wanted to do in life. Make the world a better place. She discovered the military wasn’t really in the business of making things better, just keeping them from getting worse, if that. And with the Army Corps job, she kept people safe, though they would never know it. No one thinks about the people keeping the city’s infrastructure intact until it falls apart.

The launch alarm went off and she was almost thankful for it. She was stuck between so many emotions, she didn’t know where to land. She only knew that it really was a thoughtful gift, and she didn’t want to upset Rufus and Jiya. They were good kids, happy. She remembered what those days were like and she wouldn’t do anything to ruin them.

“Looks like the Revolution,” Rufus commented as he tapped at the screen.

“Which one?” Lucy asked.

“Ah, ours?”

There was the usual flurry of the team getting ready to launch. They really had it down to an artform at this point. She watched them grab the ladder and move it against the Lifeboat. Garcia glanced back at her and smiled lightly. 

She wasn’t sure if she wanted to kiss him, or punch him. Perhaps both?

Rufus went up first, then Wyatt. Lucy and Garcia followed. Lorena saw the slight gesture that he made, making sure Lucy didn’t bump her head. It was quite likely the woman didn’t even know he was doing it. He was always a gentleman like that. 

Lorena looked back at her gifts. She really wanted to down the bourbon but she was better than that. She had no more claim over Garcia. If anything, she was angry that he was spending so much time with her rather than Lucy. He loved Lucy now, she could see it on his face. She read it in the journal. The heart grieves and moves on. How many times had she said that like a mantra to get through the day?

Remembering they had eggs this week, she grabbed the hot sauce and decided to make herself an omelet. It might be an egg-only omelet, but with the sauce, everything else was texture, really.

“Hey.” Amy leaned against the counter as Lorena rummaged through the fridge for anything she could add to her meal.

“Yes?” was Lorena’s short reply. There was no way the Preston sister would be wanting idle chit-chat.

“We’re the only two to remember, you know?” the woman flat out said it and Lorena paused, hand still on the milk jug. “I… didn’t think it would mean that much, but it does.”

Lorena left the cold items in the fridge and closed it. “We only remember the same half I wasn’t in prison for.”

“But you’ve met my Lucy.”

“You shouldn’t think of her like that.”

“I’m trying not to,” Amy said sharply, but there was clearly some pain there. “She is Lucy, she’s my sister, but she’s… different. In some ways she’s been less hurt by this timeline, and in others, she’s been terribly burned. God, who knew Wyatt would turn into such a dick?”

“White male, Delta Force, left his wife by the side of the road to die…” Lorena offered an answer that was for a clearly rhetorical question.

Amy sighed. “I miss Dave. But I’m glad to have Jiya and Connor back. _And_ I’m just happy to be alive, I’m sure you can relate.”

Some days, she couldn’t.

“This is a lot harder than I thought it was going to be,” Amy admitted, a touch sadly. “I have my sister, but I miss her too.”

“Have you told her this?” Lorena asked bluntly.

“Yes!” Amy snapped back, then took a breath. “Kinda. Ugh. You’re the only person who understands these feelings… I mean, we’ve both came back to slightly altered timelines after going on a mission in the Lifeboat—”

“Mothership.”

Amy was not impressed. “We come back, things are different, but this… this _feels_ different, doesn’t it? Not like, oh, Flynn shot Paul Revere so now everyone has a different poem stuck in their head.”

“Karl shot Revere,” Lorena corrected her. “I shot the other guy.”

“Have you always been like this?” 

“Eh.” Lorena shrugged. “I went through a toxic male environment in the military, and the run-of-the-mill misogyny of being a professional in any field other than housework. I promise you, though, I got a gooey center on the inside.”

“You know, I believe that.” Amy was smirking at her. “It’s the only thing that makes Tall Flynn make any sense.”

“It did, once,” Lorena replied tightly. “Look. You’re right. This all feels different on a scale that is hard to put into words. And that’s before we even touch any of my particular complications,” she mumbled that last part. “But you’ll never sort it out until you clear the air with Lucy. She needs to understand what you’re feeling, and you need to understand her feelings. I’m sure this is as complicated for her too. You were erased for five years.”

“Ugh,” Amy slumped back against the counter. “If I wanted logical and sane advice, I would have gone to Jiya.”

“Which is why you came to me.” Lorena crossed her arms and tried to find her mother-voice, if it was even still there, buried under the carnage. “You like Jiya, you don’t like me. You want an excuse not to take the advice because that’s easier. You don’t want to do what’s right, what will hurt before it will heal.”

Amy considered Lorena’s words for a very long moment. “Is that what you and Tall Flynn are doing, hurting before you’re healing?”

“Garcia and I know the score,” she replied flatly. “We might just not agree on all the rules, is all.”

“Is that why you’re sleeping on the sofa?” the woman asked bluntly.

“Pretty much.” Lorena felt no need to lie, especially as Amy may be fishing for information for her sister. “Everything feels different, like you said. He’s not my Garcia, and I’m not his Lorena.”

Amy raised a brow. “I though you said not to think like that?”

“You two are sisters, that’s something else entirely.” Lorena shrugged. “And like I said, Garcia and I know the score.”

“Does that score involve Lucy?” The woman was downright enigmatic when she said it. 

Lorena considered how she should respond. She abhorred gossip. But in the end, it wasn’t a fair game if one player wasn’t given any cards. “I was dead. He was dead. Us being alive now doesn’t change that. Whatever Lucy wants to do, feels that she needs to do, then she won’t find any resistance from me. I’ve tried to make that clear, maybe I have, maybe I haven’t. It’s still true all the same.”

“Maybe she needs better assurances,” Amy suggested with a hint of overprotectiveness. “Twice burned and all that.”

“You are still her sister, protective of her, caring about her,” Lorena pointed out. “Some things feel different, but clearly that hasn’t changed.”

“And your feelings for Tall Flynn?” Amy deflected back.

“I love him,” Lorena admitted easily. “But loving someone and being in love with them are two completely different beasts.”

“I am starving,” Jiya barged into the area and then stopped, staring between them. “I, ah, I’ll just grab an apple.”

“Nonsense.” Lorena went back to the fridge, pulling out the omelet ingredients she had abandoned. “I’m making lunch, so long as you can handle spicy.”

“Uh, hello, Lebanese.” Jiya practically scoffed. “I guarantee whatever is in that bottle is mild compared to what I was raised up on.”

Lorena grinned. “Let’s find out.”


	18. Chapter 18

**Now**

“You think that will work?” Christopher questioned Lorena as they stood staring at a corner of the living area.

“There is more space here than I’ve seen used,” Lorena pointed out, gesturing to the tv and sporadic seating. The whole area blended into the kitchen. Someone was just as likely to be found sitting at the tables than anywhere else in the bunker. “I already have two walls which cuts down on building. I’ll do a proper interior frame structure, put in some insulation which will help regulate temperature and noise.”

The agent eyed her warily. “How much will it cost?” 

“Not as much as it could.” Lorena shrugged. “You’re not paying for labor.”

“Do you have a list of what you need?” she asked.

Lorena handed over a folded sheet of paper. “It’s in stages so you don’t have to bring it all in at once.”

“How long will this take?” Christopher asked as she read down the list.

“You can build a house in a day if you have the supplies, manpower, and a plan,” she liked to point out. “Give me a week or so on this, most of that will be paint drying.”

“Alright,” the agent sighed and slipped the paper into her inside jacket pocket. “I’ll start having things delivered in two days.”

“Sounds good.”

The alarm went off. She was beginning to reach that stage where she was tuning it out and not jumping, skittish to the sound.

“What we got?” Christopher yelled out as she headed for the console.

Lorena followed, she really didn’t have much else to do. It’s not like she had any information Garcia didn’t have from the journal. And any Rittenhouse intel she had was probably useless because of the timeline shift, and her being in jail most of the time.

“March, 1961,” Rufus mumbled as he tapped at the keys. “Ah, Sneeze-henz-key… and I totally mispronounced that.”

“Snezhinsk.” Lorena corrected him, and everyone looked at her. “Snezhinsk was a closed city, during the Cold War, like Los Alamos. It’s where the Russians build the Tsar Bomba.”

“I hope that’s a really bopping club drink.”

“Tsar Bomba,” Lucy repeated, nodding at Lorena. “It was the most powerful nuclear weapon that’s ever been tested. That was in 1961, on, ah, October 30th, the day before Halloween.”

“And it was tested in Snezhinsk?” Christopher asked.

“No, it was tested on an island,” Lucy explained, “up off the Northern Coast. Far away from most civilization. But it was built in Snezhinsk, at the…” she took a breath, “All-Russian Scientific Research Institute of Technical Physics.”

“Wow, that’s a mouthful,” Amy said what everyone was thinking.

“So Rittenhouse is after a nuke,” Wyatt observed.

“But why?” Connor was shaking his head. “The one Anthony put in the Mothership, well, the machine itself would need to be replaced before it ran out.”

“Could it be malfunctioning?” Amy asked him.

“They wouldn’t be able to jump if it were,” Jiya pointed out. 

“Could they…” Lucy started and cleared her throat. “Could Emma have built another time machine, and she’s going after a power source for it?”

Dread filled the air as everyone tensed, except Connor who gave a very British tsk and sigh. “The Tsar Bomba would be like putting diesel in a petrol tank.”

“You need a fission bomb,” Lorena said casually. “The Tsar Bomba was a hydrogen bomb, therefore fusion.”

“Exactly,” Connor said smugly.

“How did you know that?” Jiya was the only willing to ask her.

“I like things that explode.” Lorena shrugged. “I asked Anthony a lot of questions when we stole our nuke.”

“Yeah,” Rufus said blankly. “That makes sense.”

“Whatever the reason,” Christopher said loudly, “it can’t be good and we’re wasting time.”

Lucy didn’t move, she was looking at Lorena. “Your family is from that region, right? The Ural Mountains.”

“Ah, Chelyabinsk, yeah,” Lorena answered. She’d been thinking about it the whole time they were discussing Rittenhouse’s plan. “I have cousins, scattered about. But my grandmother’s immediate family died during the war, and she came with my grandfather to the states.”

“You should come with us then,” Lucy didn’t even miss a beat in suggesting it. “You speak fluent Russian, and I’m sure you have some knowledge of the area?”

“I have visited,” Lorena admitted, a sense of anxiety coming over her. “But not Snezhinsk itself, just some of the towns near there, where my grandmother grew up.”

“That’s more than we know,” Lucy pointed out. 

“It’s a good idea,” Christopher decided, not giving her a choice. “Lorena, grab a gun, you’re going. Who’s taking the fourth seat?”

Garcia and Wyatt glanced between each other. Neither seemed to want to jump at the idea. Wyatt was probably wary because Lorena had killed him the last time they were both in the past at the same time. Garcia, well, travelling back in time with the two women he has the most complicated relationships with? 

“I’ll go,” Garcia volunteered after only that moment of hesitation. “I can speak Russian, just not as fluently.”

“I can’t speak it at all,” Wyatt admitted.

“Then it’s settled,” Christopher ushered them. “Go.”

Lorena grabbed a gun and some ammo. They didn’t have any grenades, so that was a pity. But then, she’d already given Rufus a heart attack with her creative use of them. 

“First time in the Lifeboat?” Lucy asked as they strapped in.

“Yeah,” she answered with only slight anxiety.

Lorena was less worried about the time machine, and more about the people inside it. It was one thing to know Garcia and Lucy had an almost intimate dynamic on missions. It was a whole other thing to be confronted face to face with it.

But she supposed it had to happen… eventually.


	19. Chapter 19

**Now**

“Do you always manage to find clothes that fit you?” Lorena asked him after they helped themselves to some luggage left unattended at a train station in Chelyabinsk. He found himself a classic 50’s suit and vest in navy blue.

“Usually.” He couldn’t help but grin, remembering many a shopping trip gone awry in their past. 

Lorena shook her head, but there was a smile on her face. She had opted for a royal blue, flared woolen skirt, something that would give movement, as well as warmth in the tail end of a Russian winter. It had a matching woolen coat to go over a cream blouse. With her hair up in a bun, she looked rather professional.

In contrast, Lucy had picked a black pencil skirt, cinched waist, and burgundy blouse. Her matching coat was black, a streamlined cut with burgundy piping. She had put her hair up, a petite hat balanced delicately on her head. She looked very much the sophisticated socialite. 

They were both beautiful. 

“Once we get around people,” Lorena directed her attention to Lucy and Rufus, “you two are going to have to keep quiet. I can do a pretty good accent, Garcia can play at being part of the Soviet Block… but if you two are made as Americans, that’s a quick trip to the firing squad.”

“Question,” Rufus raised his hand. “How much am I going to stick out here?”

“A lot,” Flynn said bluntly, earning a light glare from the man.

“Afro-Russians make up a very small percent of the population,” Lucy actually answered the question. “Something like… .01%.”

“I am not going to blend in at all,” Rufus said with the certain unflappability he had.

“No, you’re not.” Lorena sighed. “But if anyone actually tries to stop and ask, let me do the talking.”

“Got no problem with that.” Rufus put his hands half up in surrender. 

“We need to figure out how to get into Snezhinsk,” Lucy said. As they made their way out of the luggage area, getting closer to the crowds, she started to basically whisper. “It’s a closed city, there won’t be a train that goes into it. Just close to it.”

“I wonder what Rittenhouse’s plan is for getting into it?” Rufus asked into the air.

“If they were smart,” Flynn got to thinking, “they would have doctored papers to give them access.”

Lucy crinkled her brow, thinking. “Not sure even you can talk your way past the border guards.”

“Huh,” Lorena said absently as she stared at the crowd.

“What do you see?” he asked her.

“A dead guy,” she mumbled, then quickly looked away. “Your three o’clock, guy in tweed, his hat trying to cover up a modern haircut.”

“I see him.” Flynn looked, but didn’t, not wanting the man to realize someone was watching him.

“In my timeline,” Lorena explained, “I had a run in with him in New York City. In the 30s.”

Rufus cleared his throat. “And you… killed him?”

“He shot at me first.”

“He seems to be alone,” Flynn realized, watching all the people around him.

“He’s waiting on the train,” Lucy pointed out. “But on this side of the platform, it would take him away from Snezhinsk.”

“Is the Tsar Bomba not the target?” Flynn asked her.

She glanced up at Flynn. “Why don’t we ask him?”

He nodded at Lucy and they both started to move. He glanced up, saw Lorena and faltered for a moment.

“Lorena,” Lucy said her name first. “Rittenhouse doesn’t know you’re alive, it may be best to keep it that way.”

“I understand,” she said in that blank way that meant a lot of things were happening under the surface. “I’ll create a distraction. You grab him and interrogate him.”

“Give us five minutes to get into position,” he told her, and she nodded like a good solider does.

He walked passed, Lucy next to him with Rufus trailing behind. He glanced back, she was already sighting her distraction plan. Then he quickly snapped his eyes forward. It would do them no good to run into other Rittenhouse agents because he wasn’t paying attention.

Flynn positioned himself just out of the man’s line of sight and waited for the distraction. A moment later, there was some yelling and gasping at the other end of the platform. Everyone’s attention went that way, including the Rittenhouse agent. Flynn reached out, snagged him, and deftly dragged him into one of the maintenance closets of the station.

Within seconds, the man was tied to a chair with a cleaning cloth shoved into his mouth.

“Now,” Flynn said in English as he towered over the man, “I’m going to take that rag out of your mouth, and I when I do, if you scream, I’ll shoot you in the gut and let you bleed out, we understand each other?”

The man nodded.

“Good.” Flynn removed the cloth, the goon said nothing.

“What is your mission?” Lucy asked him. “Why are you traveling away from Snezhinsk?” 

The goon continued to keep quiet. Flynn looked at Lucy, and she looked at him.

“Right then.” Flynn holstered his weapon, then slid off his jacket. “The hard way it is.”

After undoing his cuffs to push his sleeves back, and several punches later, the man decided to change his tune. “We were told to find a government official and either persuade him to move the testing location of the Tsar Bomba, or kill him.”

“Why does Rittenhouse want the test moved?” Lucy asked him as blood dribbled from his lip.

He wouldn’t answer her, so she glanced over at Flynn. He brought his fist up, the agent flinched. “Alright, alright. I don’t get paid enough for this.”

“You get paid?” Rufus asked. “You’re not, you know, in it for the glory of Rittenhouse?”

The goon snorted, “The way I hear it, Rittenhouse’s little time travel scheme is losing popularity in the organization. Seems someone keeps making it more trouble than it’s worth.”

“I wonder who that could be,” Flynn said with a grin.

“You haven’t answered my question yet,” Lucy reminded the agent.

“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “I was given orders. I didn’t ask why, just how much.”

Lucy made a tsking sound, her mind working a mile a minute. “Which official?” 

“Left breast pocket,” he answered, annoyed.

Flynn searched his pocket and pulled out a piece of a paper, written in Cyrillic. He could read Russian worse than he could speak it, but it looked like a name and address. Lorena would be able to translate it, so he pretended he knew what he was looking at and slipped it into his pocket. 

“Why were you alone?” Flynn asked him.

“We didn’t know where this guy was,” the agent got even more annoyed. He also didn’t seem to be lying. “We split up, hit some government offices for recon. I got a call with the address and told to head to the train station. Apparently, I was the closest.”

“Alright, I think we’re good here,” Flynn said, grabbing the cloth again. He shoved it in the guy’s mouth and used the agent’s own tie to secure it. “I’m sure you’ll be found soon enough.”

The guy just glared at him, but at least he wasn’t going to die. 

After making sure the coast was clear, the team walked out of the storage room.

“He wasn’t alone,” Lucy said quietly once the door was closed. “We need to get to the scientist before the rest of his team does.”

“Looks like we’re taking the train.” Rufus was just as quiet, looking around. “And I’m already starting to get attention.”

“Let’s go.” Flynn ushered them down the platform to locate Lorena. 

Her above average height made her easier to spot, standing at the end of the platform. A train could be heard coming in the distance. If it was the one they needed to get on, then they didn’t have much time.

Three men were walking out of the station, onto the platform. They recognized the team right away and couldn’t hide their reactions. Both groups froze, but it was his one gun to their three. Flynn had had worse odds, but he hadn’t had Lucy and Rufus right behind him. And Lorena… the goons were between him and her.

The train blew into the station. A crowd of Russians came surging out of the station whilst another started to exit the train. It was the perfect time to escape without shots being fired. But Lorena…

“Flynn,” Rufus said with a tinge of fear, neither him nor Lucy able to speak anything else lest the crowd now gathered around them would hear their English.

Lorena was looking right at him, gesturing with her eyes and expression for him to go. 

A few more seconds passed and Flynn made a decision. He grabbed Lucy’s hand and joined the crowd. Rufus was on their tail as they weaved through the crowd. Flynn would always stand out, but if he could just get them a big enough lead, get out of the agent’s line of site for a few seconds, then they could hide. 

They rushed out of the station, into a plaza. The older building had been built at a time where foot traffic and carriages were the primary mode of transportation. The front area was paved in brick, several vendor stalls scattered about where one could buy flowers, vegetables, or knickknacks. He quickly led the others to hide behind one of the vendor’s trailers.

A few seconds later, the Rittenhouse men emerged, looking around the area scattered with people. An announcement was made, Flynn catching most of it. The train was about to depart. The men decided to put the mission first and headed back inside. No doubt they would be watching for any signs of the team getting on the train. 

The vendor whose trailer they were hiding behind was not terribly happy. They were shooed away, just as they heard the train whistle as it pulled away. 

“That was close,” Rufus said quietly.

“Yeah.” Flynn shouldn’t have stalled. He should have fled as soon as he had the chance. 

“We should find Lorena,” Lucy said, walking back towards the station.

It didn’t take them long, she was standing just inside, not even bothering to hide. It’s not like she’d be recognized. She saw Flynn and gestured for him to walk towards a quieter corner to talk.

“They didn’t find their friend,” Lorena told them. “I watched all three get on the train. They didn’t get back off.”

“So, they’re well ahead of us now.” Lucy shook her head, not quite defeated yet.

“Do you know where they’re going?” Lorena asked. “What did our friend say?”

“The plan is to move the location of the blast,” Lucy told her. “I don’t know if it’s because they want to keep that area from being irradiated, or if they want somewhere else to suffer.”

“This is the Cold War,” Flynn pointed out. “They could be trying to use the bomb to heat things up.”

“Always a possibility,” Lucy agreed. “Flynn has the address of where they were going.”

He pulled the piece of paper out of his pocket and handed it to Lorena. She took a second to look over it, and then walked over to a map hanging on the wall not far from them.

“Can we get there on the next train,” Lucy asked. 

Lorena chuckled. “No.”

“Lorena?” Flynn knew that look on her face.

“While I was waiting, I chatted up one of the porters,” she explained, turning towards them. “There was a big rock slide up the tracks. Those guys will be forced off at the station right before it, then they’ll have to find other transportation. But the way the porter heard it, the road is out too because they ran parallel at that point.”

“Damn,” Rufus said a bit loudly, then quieted down. “You think they would have checked that.”

“They said they had to look up his location,” Lucy pointed out. “So many records from this era simply… vanished overnight. A lot of names, dates, places… all gone.”

“We still have a chance to beat them,” Flynn was optimistic, looking up at the train schedule. “But how do we get past the rockslide?”

Lorena grinned. “I have an idea.”


	20. Chapter 20

**Now**

“Sasha!” a man shouted as he gave Lorena a big hug. The two started to speak rapidly in Russian.

Situated between the train station and the official who Rittenhouse wanted to influence—or kill—was a ranch. Lorena explained that it was her great-uncle’s homestead. She had visited there, once, when she was the age that Iris would be now. 

Her great-uncle Denis Gustav, and his wife, Natasha, were cheery and bright people. Lorena told them she was his cousin, Sasha, from St. Petersburg. She knew the two hadn’t really kept in touch due to the distance, and it being 1961. And since Lorena did take a lot after that side of the family, Denis didn’t question that she was her great-aunt Sasha.

They stood in the Gustav’s home as Lorena spun a story in order to get Denis to let them borrow some horses. Flynn understood some of it, and at one point he heard talk about a husband and wife, but Lorena just waved Denis off the subject and continued.

Within half an hour, they were in the barn, saddling up horses. They got Rufus and Lucy sorted first, having them lead their horses out of the barn so they could get comfortable with them. That left Flynn and Loren to saddle their own.

“This was smart,” he told her, “going to your great-uncle.”

“You guys would have figured something out.” She was tightening the billets. “This just shaves a few minutes off Rittenhouse’s lead.”

“A few minutes can be the difference between life and death,” he pointed out.

“Just stop it,” Lorena told him, looking over her horse’s saddle. 

“Stop what?” Flynn asked, knowing the answer and hoping he was wrong.

Lorena gave him a hard stare. “Lucy is a civilian. I can take care of myself, just like if Wyatt was here.”

He opened his mouth to argue, but he knew he had stalled earlier, worried. But he didn’t have to be, Lorena wouldn’t have been recognized. She would only have become a target if he drew attention to her. But he had that sense of protection, of not wanting to see either of the women he cared about getting hurt.

He couldn’t let Lorena die, again.

“Sasha,” Denis called out, approaching with a satchel. He had apparently packed them some supplies for their trip.

“ _Spasibo._ ” Lorena accepted the gift, and they exchanged a few more words about the horses he was letting them borrow. 

Lorena hugged Denis, then she attached the satchel to her saddle.

Once Denis walked off, she turned back to Flynn. “Keep your head on straight. I’m not dying before we save Iris.”

She led the horse out of the barn, and Flynn took a deep breath. It was about time they had another talk, but this wasn’t the time nor the place. Mission came first.

It was a lovely ride through the countryside. It reminded him of the first time they took Iris out horseback riding. She sat in the front of his saddle, constantly making ‘giddy up’ and other cowboy related commentary. There was no arguing she was their daughter.

By the way Lorena’s eyes were downcast, she was likely having the same thoughts.

While Lucy was telling Rufus all about Barbed Wire Sunday—which would happen in August and be the beginning of the Berlin Wall—Flynn got up beside Lorena.

“Something has upset you,” he told her point blank.

She glanced at him with a hard expression.

“Get it off your chest,” he nearly commanded her. “We both need to have our head on straight.”

Throwing that back at her was not a proud moment, but it had to be done. He needed to stop thinking he had to protect her, and she needed to stop holding things in.

“Denis thought you and Lucy were married,” she mumbled out. “Sasha has a husband, looks nothing like you, so I don’t know if Denis remembered that, or…”

“Lorena, I…

“Save it. War isn’t a time for sensibilities,” she continued, her voice deflated. “I know you and Lucy have this… thing, that you do on missions. I’m not going to get butt-hurt because you two make a better team.”

“I’m sorry,” was he could seem to say.

“For what?” she scoffed, then lowered her voice enough so only he could hear. “You don’t want to throw your relationship in my face or something? Been there, done that. I read the journal. And honestly, I don’t even know why you’re bothering to wait for the _Titanic_ , if it even happens in this timeline. Kiss her and put us all out of our misery.”

He could see the pain and anger in her, but it wasn’t that of a scorned or jealous lover. She really did look like a woman who simply wanted things to end, be over with. But what exactly where those things?

“Do you feel better now?” he asked honestly. “Getting that off your chest?”

“Yeah, actually…” She shook her head.

“Hey, Scary Flynn,” Rufus called up at them. “Are we there yet?”

Lorena smiled at her moniker, pulling a compass and map from her pocket. Orienteering was necessary training in Sapper School. So was learning how to tie all different types of knots, something which came in handy for a many other things not to be discussed in public.

“Almost there,” she told Rufus.

The Cold War between himself and Lorena over for the moment, he turned his attention back to the mission. 

A few minutes later, they arrived at the house of the government official. It was your typical mid-opulent home, older, tucked back among the trees. They heard noise coming from the back, so they trotted that way. The man was cutting firewood. He looked up at them, axe in hand.

Lorena started to talk, feeding him some story. The team hadn’t really discussed that part of the plan, but they trusted her to be just as charming and persuasive as Flynn could be when required. She had managed to do a lot of damage in her timeline, and that wasn’t by accident.

She dismounted and they followed suit. There was no barn for the horses, so they tied them down and threw blankets over them. Hopefully they wouldn’t be there very long.

They walked into the house, Lorena and the man still chatting. They were talking about the Tsar Bomba. She was telling him that Americans wanted to change the plans that were already set. He didn’t like the thought of that at all.

The sound of engines purred outside. Snowmobiles, two of them. A Rittenhouse agent on one, and two on the other. They dismounted and all headed towards the front door. They must not have realized they were beat to the house.

Lucy opened her mouth to say something, but remembered she couldn’t speak English around the Russian. But her eyes said everything as they communicated. 

“ _Behind the table,_ ” Flynn said in Russian as he tipped the Formica topped breakfast table over.

Lucy and Rufus huddled behind it with the official. 

“ _Go outside and circle back on them_ ,” he told Lorena as he crouched down behind the table as well. “ _I’ll hold them off here._ ”

It was a good plan, but not without its risks. But it’s what he would have done if Wyatt was there, and Lorena didn’t hesitate. She disappeared out the back door and he trained his gun on the hallway that led into the kitchen. The table would give limited protection, so he needed to make his shots count.

Seconds ticked down and he could hear the floorboards creak in the hallway leading to the kitchen. When the first goon appeared, Flynn let him get a little father in before shooting him. This allowed Flynn to get another shot off and clip the next guy. Now they were in a standoff. 

If… if they got to Lorena, he was going to need an exit strategy because that would mean the third goon would try to come through the back door.

Two very clear shots rang out of a different caliber, everything went silent.

“Cleared,” Lorena hollered down the hall.

Flynn took little for granted in these situations. He slowly stood and kept his gun ready, just in case. But Lorena’s shots had been true, all three men were dead.

By the time they got rid of the bodies and convinced the official to keep to his original schedule, it had gotten very late, the temperature dropping with the sun. They returned to Denis’ ranch and decided between the cold, and not wanting to get caught by Russian police, it was best to take the man up on his offer to let them stay overnight. Along with leftover stew to eat, and vodka to drink.

“What did she say?” Lucy asked Lorena as soon as Natasha had walked off.

“They don’t have many spare rooms,” Lorena explained. “You and Rufus each get one. Me and Garcia, we’ll sleep out in the barn, with the horses.”

“Will you be warm enough?” Lucy looked between them, that perhaps not her only worry.

“We’ll be fine,” he assured her, non-verbally telling Lucy that this would be a good chance to talk to Lorena, alone, away from eavesdroppers and distractions. That was really what they had been missing all this time, a chance to just talk, unabated.

Lucy nodded her understanding, and he wondered if perhaps that had been why Lucy wanted Lorena to join them. Did she hope they would be able to get a moment of abject privacy? 

The barn wasn’t warm, but it wasn’t freezing either. Between all the horses and the thick wooden timber used to build it, it was just a tad chilly. Nothing a heavy blanket and a straw bed wouldn’t fix.

“Feels like the 90s,” Flynn murmured as he set himself up on one side of an unused stall. He was referring to his time spent in the military, being moved place to place, often having to sleep wherever he could fit his tall frame.

Lorena took a long deep beath, then turned to him. “Say whatever it is you wanna say so I can go to sleep.”

“Funny.” He laid out a blanket over the hay. “I was going to say the same thing to you.”


	21. Chapter 21

**Now**

Lorena shrugged, going back to fixing up her own bed. “I’ve said everything I need to.” 

“I don’t think that’s true,” he told her bluntly. “You haven’t changed as much as you think you have.”

“Yeah, well, neither have you,” she replied tiredly, then mirthlessly chuckled. “You want to know what I’ve been too afraid to ask you?”

“Yes,” he answered truthfully. “If you’re ready.”

She met his eyes, her own hard and unreadable. “What did you think, when you first read those missions in the journal?”

Flynn gave himself a moment to measure his words out. He thought she would ask, at some point, but he wasn’t as prepared as he thought he’d be for when it happened. “Disbelief.” 

“Just that, disbelief?” she asked, no anger, no confusion.

“It had only been three weeks,” he started his explanation, the memories feeling fresher than they had in years. “You had a gut shot and took your last breath in my arms. I felt like my heart had been ripped out of my chest. Reading that I was with another woman, yeah, I was in disbelief.”

“When did it change for you?” Her voice was far too even and controlled for it to be natural.

“I don’t know when,” he admitted, taking in a long breath of cold air. “Emotions have a mind of their own. It wasn’t until… until we were standing in the burning wreckage of the _Hindenburg_ that I realized… I might be in trouble.”

“The first time you met her,” Lorena said quietly. “Face to face.”

“Yes.”

“Two years,” she said the words, slight glistening in her eyes, but a sternness to her face. “I can live with that.”

“Lorena.” He stepped forward, wanting to reach out for her. It was an oddly mixed feeling of want, need, and pain.

“You were dead before you hit the floor.” Her words came out quickly. “Rittenhouse didn’t mess around. They put, I don’t know, five or six rounds into you. Can’t trust the police report, it was doctored to cover up what they did. All I know is by the time I got to you, and Iris… some days I feel like dying right then would have been easier.”

He knew that feeling all too well. If Lucy hadn’t found him, he would have eaten a bullet and hoped and prayed that he’d get one last chance to apologize to Lorena and Iris before getting dragged down into hell for failing them.

“The journal doesn’t say we save Iris.” Tears were falling steadily from Lorena’s eyes. “It doesn’t even say we stop Rittenhouse.”

“We can’t give up hope.” He found himself stepping forward. “The journal has been right about some things, wrong about others.”

“Because we keep going in circles!” she shouted, her jaw tight, fists clenched. “Iris dies. Two years later, one of us steals a time machine. Seven years after that, Lucy goes back and starts it all over again.”

Flynn took another step forward, and gently reached for her hands, uncurling them into his palms. “And one day we’ll get it right.”

“What’s right?” She was trembling. “Are we going to have to choose between Iris or stopping Rittenhouse?”

“I… I don’t know.” He swallowed hard, his throat dry at that thought. “But we can’t give up, we have to keep trying.”

“And then what?” Lorena snapped, pulling her hands from his. “You asked me that and I still don’t have an answer. I’ve lost… everything.” She covered her eyes as all attempts to hold back tears failed.

“Lorena,” he whispered as he wrapped his arms around her, his own tears cold against his cheeks in the chilly air.

She buried her face against him, letting the sobs come freely. He wondered when was the last time she let go like this. Certainly not since she came to this timeline. Not when she’d be within ear shot of others. 

When she was in the military, she couldn’t show supposed weakness. It was a survival mechanism that also cultivated her puckish side. While she still enjoyed her pranks, she had dropped her walls with him because she didn’t have to hide behind them anymore. But those instincts where unburied to act as a protective shield in prison, if not since the early days of fighting Rittenhouse.

But here, in this chilly barn in the middle of the Cold War… it was just the two of them.

“Let me go back,” she mumbled into his chest.

“It’s too risky.” He held her tighter. “I’m not letting you die again, and I’m never going to stop looking for a way to save her.”

She was so quiet. “What if we don’t?” 

That was the one thing he feared the most. That his family had to die. Any deviation from that, and Rittenhouse wins and the whole world loses. “I refuse to believe that’s an option.”

“Failure is always an option.” Lorena pulled out of his grip, but didn’t move far. She pulled at the neck of the coat she was wearing, then undid the top couple of buttons of the blouse underneath. 

He was confused as to what she was doing until he saw it, a nasty scar just below her collar bone, just out of view under whatever top she wore. 

“Rittenhouse tried to take me out, in prison,” she told him, dully. “I was going to let them.” She chuckled sadly. “I knew… I knew none of this was right. I never said it out loud but… I wasn’t supposed to live. And in a few years, it wouldn’t matter anyway. Somehow… the timeline would correct itself to you being the survivor, and I would be dead. It was only a matter of… time.”

He reached forward for her again, she backed away.

“The only thing that saved me was the fact I have a very strong involuntary fight response,” she admitted, not being able to look at him. “Because otherwise… I gave up. I gave up on… everything. Me. You. Iris.”

And that was it, the crux of everything. The core in which all of Lorena’s depression circled. Now that it saw the light of day, was it as terrifying as she had imagined it to be?

“I don’t blame you,” he said, realizing it was the truth. “Having the journal, reading about Lucy and I… knowing about yourself in this timeline… being trapped in prison for years…”

“I should have been stronger,” she nearly yelled.

“You were strong enough,” he told her firmly, “because you’re here, and that’s what matters.”

“I prayed to god,” there was so much pain and anger there. “And all I got was evidence that I should be dead, and my husband… would do exactly as I’d want him to do… so I can’t even be mad about it.”

“I prayed to god too.” Flynn wasn’t the praying type, very much lapsed in his beliefs, and she knew it. “And he led me, led both of us, to Lucy. And because of this, we’ve both alive, fighting Rittenhouse, and we _will_ save Iris.”

Lorena rubbed her arms and hugged herself. He got the impression the cold was coming from the inside. But he stepped forward and wrapped his arms around her again. He rubbed his hand up and down her back, trying to comfort her.

“You haven’t given up,” he told her quietly. “You just got bogged down. Take a step back, take a moment for yourself, and recharge. Otherwise, you get stress fractures, and that leads to leaks, crumbling concrete, and the next thing you know you’re putting your foot through the twenty-fifth floor. And your shoe ends up in a bird’s nest on the eighteenth.”

Flynn hadn’t thought about that random conversation in years, and he wasn’t sure why he suddenly remembered, but it did the trick. Lorena started to laugh, the kind of which was a cousin to a sob.

“You’re not supposed to make me laugh,” she mumbled against him once she caught her breath.

“You’re allowed to laugh,” he countered as she looked up at him. “You’re allowed to be happy and feel joy. That’s not giving up, it’s living a healthy life so you can keep working towards your goals: stopping Rittenhouse, saving Iris.”

Flynn held her as she contemplated his words. It was a hard lesson to learn, but when grief has a hold on you, it really is like drowning. 

“You’re right.” Lorena moved to wipe her cheeks. “And you’re not the first to say it.”

“It’s hard, I know. But you’ll get there,” he promised.

“It might just… take me some time to… to get it through my thick skull.”

He was happy she said that, but he had to be honest with her, always. “That voice that tells you that you failed, that you gave up, that you can’t be a mother anymore… it won’t go away. Not for a long time. All you can do is recognize when it’s there, and tell it to shut the hell up.”

“I’ve always been pretty bossy,” she snarked, which was a good start, but there was still enough pain there to drag it down into a frown. Then her entire body paused as she looked at him. “Lucy, has she tried to drown her thoughts with the vodka yet?”

“Yes,” he said, unsure why the conversation took that turn, wary of Lorena trying to change focus just when he was getting somewhere.

“It was the Wyatt stuff, wasn’t it?” she said, thinking, reading the answer on his face. “The journal never really said why, at least my version didn’t.”

“Neither did mine,” he admitted, filing that information away. “Lucy… carries all of this on her shoulders, in every timeline it seems. Sometimes I wonder if she purposefully didn’t put things like being a Rittenhouse descendant in the journal just so she wouldn’t get everything dumped on her at once.”

“Good a reason as any.” Lorena shrugged, pulling away to grab her discarded blanket. “Don’t let me get in the way of your late-night chats. I don’t mean that sarcastically. If we’re going to defeat Rittenhouse and save Iris, then we need Lucy… and Lucy needs you.”

He weighed that question in his head and in his heart. It was a question that kept him up at night. “Lorena, I… I do still care about you. If you want to try to rebuild things, I will take those steps with you. I… I don’t want you to think that…”

“That it’s no longer an option?” she offered, and as much as he didn’t want to frame it like that, it was the best words to use.

“Lorena—”

“Garcia,” she cut him off with a firm, yet gentle, tone. “If we are going to get through this, with or without saving Iris. We have to accept the truth.”

“What truth?” he asked, afraid he already knew the answer.

Lorena walked back to him, blanket thrown over one arm, her other hand reaching up to slid behind his neck. “This.”

She kissed him.

And he kissed her back.


	22. Chapter 22

**Now**

Lucy could smell food when she woke up. Denis and his wife were very lovely hosts, even if she couldn’t understand a word they were saying. It was interesting though to see how they compared to Lorena, as they were cousins from vastly different generations.

There was a light knock on her door, she’d recognize the cadence anywhere. “Come in.”

“Hey,” Flynn said as he walked inside the small guest room. “Denis said he’d give us a lift to the railway station we passed on our way in. We can walk to the Lifeboat from there.”

“He’s been very kind,” Lucy said appreciatively, pulling on a borrowed, never to be returned, sweater over her blouse. “It seems like a family trait.”

“Just never make a Gusev angry,” he replied with a chuckle. “They only seem to have two modes, kind and wrathful.”

“Amy has told me a few stories.” Lucy wanted to know as many details as possible about the other timeline. Partly because there may be information that could be useful to in this one, and mostly because she wanted Amy to work through the grieving process.

Amy had lost her whole life. Even if they defeated Rittenhouse tomorrow… the friends she had to leave behind wouldn’t recognize her. She had no degrees or certifications. She was a ghost. But she didn’t have to be made to feel like one.

“You and Lorena have a good talk?” Lucy asked him. The older woman was also a grieving ghost, though she seemed less incline to talk about it. 

“Yeah, we talked.” Flynn gently closed the door behind him. “There was a lot of pent up… everything.”

“I thought that might be the case.” Lucy grabbed her shoes and sat down in a chair. “I don’t presume to know her as well as you, but, I got the impression she’s not the kind of person to make a scene. There is no privacy in the bunker.”

“Astute as always.” He smiled at her, that softness in his eyes that always felt like him being proud, but not patronizing. Then he licked his lips as his expression fell into something melancholic. “We talked, we cried, and we… slept together.”

It took a second for that to register, Lucy blinking rapidly. “Oh. Okay.” She busied herself with putting on her shoes. “That’s… good?”

“It was a goodbye.” Flynn looked away, through the wall into the depths of an emotional void, or maybe he just couldn’t look at her. “Lorena would say, to put out an oil well fire, you have to explode it. Suck out all the oxygen in the area and with the fuel gone, no more fire. We… we needed to put out the fire.”

“I get that,” she told him quietly. She was no stranger to break-up sex. When you know things are over, but you just need that one last walk around the relationship, sealing in the good memories before moving on. Or, perhaps in their case, to close doors that had been left open, unable to be closed until the other was there to help pull it shut. “You two going to be okay?”

“Yeah, yeah.” He nodded and didn’t look to have any doubt. “We were both holding too much inside, and you and I know just how healing it is to let it out, in whatever form it takes.”

“It frees you,” she agreed, remembering their nights spent talking to each other in his room. Now they talked more on missions, in moments like these, because neither wanted to hurt Lorena when she was so obviously in pain. “Are… are you sure it’s over? Is there any hope of you two reconciling?” 

“We’re sure.” He licked his lips in thought. “Too much grief, too much pain, too many memories… Putting out the fire only revealed the charred remains underneath. The… the storm has passed, we can stop clinging onto each other, we can move on.”

Lucy felt so sad for them, to have lost their daughter, and each other, in such a brutal way. “As long as you’re sure that’s what’s best.”

“It is.” He straightened up, a slight glimmer in his eyes that he willed away. “I… I don’t expect anything from you, just because Lorena and I are over. It hasn’t changed how I feel about you, about us, but this is as much about your feelings it is mine. I just… wanted to tell you this, so when you make any decisions, you have all the facts.”

“I appreciate that.” She’d be lying if she said she hadn’t missed him badly. Hadn’t wanted to go to him, to simply be in his presence as she fell asleep. “It’s still a bit too soon, to be making those kinds of decisions. And I’m sure while you and Lorena are over, there are still things to sort out, a friendship to salvage, I hope?”

“We can’t let Rittenhouse take everything from us.” He took a deep breath, letting it out slow. “We’ll get Iris back. We’ll do whatever it takes to give her a good life, but we can’t lie to ourselves and try to get back together. So we’ll figure something out, to make sure Iris knows we both love her very much.”

“I’m certain you will,” she said, a touch of tears in her eyes. He was hurting, Rittenhouse had destroyed a part of him. She would do whatever it took to bring some of that back to him. “You’ll save Iris, and she’ll be so loved she’ll rebel, get a tattoo, maybe date a drummer.”

He chuckled softly. “That, or rob a bank.”

“I’m sure you’d be proud of her either way.” 

There was a smile on his face, a bit of a hope shining in the darkness. 

Someone knocked on the door, said something in Russian. Flynn explained, “Sounds like it’s time to go.”

They headed outside to join Rufus and Lorena who were standing with Denis and Natasha. The car that the team originally stolen had been ditched. They couldn’t keep it very long otherwise they could get caught. Lucy knew what happened to American spies during the Cold War and did not want to share that fate.

The fact that Denis hadn’t turned them in after realizing Lucy and Rufus were American was testament to the trust he had in his family, in ‘Sasha.’

“You three in back,” Lorena told them. “I would say Garcia gets shotgun for the space, but we don’t want to risk someone seeing a black man with two women in the backseat of a car. Sorry, Rufus.”

Rufus shrugged. “It’s unfortunate that I’m getting used to it.”

“At least this means you get a window seat,” she tried to comfort him, handing over a small basic. “And first choice of breakfast pastries.”

Denis’ 1950s car was not exactly spacious, but Lucy would be lying if she said she didn’t like that she had to sit snug up against Flynn who was sitting in the middle. She had missed his presence, more than maybe she realized. 

They were dropped off at the station, Denis saying his goodbyes before leaving them to catch their train. In reality, they did the almost quarter mile-long slog to the Lifeboat. Rufus mumbling the whole time that he should figure out how to camouflage the machine so he could just drop it in the middle of a park, like a Romulan Warbird. 

Lucy watched Flynn and Lorena as they trekked through the light snow. There was definitely something different about them. Something deflated, a tension released. 

Now that they got everything off their chests, got to say the goodbyes they were never able to in their own timelines… they would be able to move forward, move on. It was all so terribly heartbreaking, but what else could they do? 

Rittenhouse had ripped a loving couple apart, and there was no way to put the pieces back together.


	23. Chapter 23

**Then**

“Upper cabinet, to your left.”

Lorena paused when she heard Lucy. She thought everyone would be asleep, or the closest proximity thereof. They had a huge decision to make about this timeline and their future tomorrow. Her mistake, of course everyone would be wide awake.

She wasn’t troubled, she had no decision to make. She was at the whims of the people who hated her. Though she could probably take solace in that they probably didn’t hate her the most, but they definitely ranked her up there under Rittenhouse and the PTO moms. 

If she was going to die or go back to prison, then she’d be damned if she was going to go without having a good cup of coffee. Not the watered down swill that they served at the cafeteria. 

Lorena glanced back at Lucy for a moment. The brunette was wrapped in a heavy robe, hair tussled as if she had been turning in her sleep a lot. 

Checking the upper cabinet, on her left, Lorena found a bottle of powdered creamer.

“Thanks,” Lorena mumbled, pulling the bottle down just as the coffee maker finished. “Um, you want a cup?”

“Yes,” she replied, then sighed. “No, I can’t sleep as is.”

“It’s unsurprising.” Lorena poured some creamer into the cup first, then slowly added the hot liquid, stirring as she did so. 

“How do you plan on sleeping?” Lucy asked her. “Or do you still don’t?”

It had been a long time since they had that conversation. “Not much else to do in prison except sleep, eat, and try not to get shanked. In any case, I only need a few hours a night.”

“Because of your Sapper training,” she confirmed.

“Yeah.” Lorena moved to the table and sat down. She was curious how much Lucy knew about Sappers, what research she might have done. But instead, Lorena asked, “How did you know I like creamer?”

“I saw you use it, when you kidnapped me.” Lucy invited herself to sit across from her. “Though you were using a liquid creamer, the powdered was the best I could offer.”

“Uh, thanks.” Lorena took a drink to cover the awkwardness she felt. She hadn’t realized the woman watched her that closely. Was Lucy that keen eyed or was Lorena that slack. She supposed she did let her guard down a little too much around Lucy. That’s how she got herself caught. “This lack of sleep wouldn’t have anything to do with the fact that whatever _you_ decide, the others will follow?”

Lucy glanced at her sharply, a tilt of defiance in her chin. “You think you know me? Because of the journal?”

“You wrote it,” she said, putting her coffee cup down. “You gave it to me.”

“I’m still not sure I believe that,” Lucy admitted, anger fading into annoyed confusion. “What happened, when I gave you the journal? I want the truth.”

Lorena let out a deep sigh as she tried not to think too hard about the moments directly preceding that event. “I was sitting in a bar, in São Paulo, about three weeks after... Wondering if it was too much effort to burn the place down with me inside it, when you walked in.” Lucy had been confused when she made her way over. Lorena hadn’t noticed it at the time but it became obvious upon review. “You told me Garcia had discovered evidence of Rittenhouse and Mason industries. About a Time Machine. I didn’t believe it at first, physics and all that, but you handed me the journal, and told me never to give up hope.”

“And you just believed me?” Lucy asked quietly.

“Yeah, you… were quite believable.” Lorena shrugged and picked the mug back up. “This timeline is either the new path forward, or an aberration that needs to be corrected. As for which… I guess we’ll see.”

The two sat in silence as they considered what that meant for themselves, for the others, for the alternate timeline.

“What would you choose?” Lucy asked her.

“It doesn’t matter,” she admitted tiredly.

“It matters to me,” there was touch of defiance in her tone.

Lorena was rendered speechless for a moment, then cleared her throat. “Either way doesn’t really work out for me. In that timeline I’m dead. In this one I’ll get thrown back in prison.”

“I won’t let that happen.” The statement started out assured but lost its confidence along the way.

“Even if you did, the team would never accept me.” Lorena looked down into her coffee. “Never trust me. And if Garcia hasn’t found a way to save Iris when he’s had more time than me, then it probably isn’t going to happen.”

“What happened to the woman who told me she wasn’t giving up hope?” Lucy asked quietly. “Whatever it takes?”

“She got arrested five minutes later,” Lorena answered wryly.

“I… I didn’t know,” Lucy nearly pleaded. “I didn’t know I was being followed.”

“I should have assumed that you were.” Lorena took a big gulp of the thankfully not-steaming-hot-anymore coffee. “Look, that’s the least of our issues right now.”

“I can’t do it,” Lucy said quickly, brokenly. “I feel for Rufus and I love Jiya like a second sister, but Amy is _my sister_. I know I won’t remember all this, but I can’t do that to my other self, to know that Amy was alive and I just… let her be erased again.” Tears had gathered in her eyes. “I can’t do it.”

Lorena watched her, the words so familiar to those found in the journal. There was no mention of an erased sister. So maybe this was the correct timeline? But then why were they in shambles, Rittenhouse posed to beat them, half their numbers dead or incapacitated? At least Garcia seemed to be recovering, was happy even, in that other world. 

He always had a bigger heart than she did. Of course he would eventually recover, move on, be happy, as the journal said he would. 

“So why are you so conflicted?” Lorena pointed out. 

Lucy sighed, rubbing her head. “Because the other timeline is closer to defeating Rittenhouse. And that’s what matters, right? Stopping them?”

“It is.” Whatever it takes. Even if that meant signing her own death warrant. “There is still a chance the other Lucy could bring her Amy back.”

“Your husband could still save you and your daughter,” Lucy added, slumping back into her seat. “I… I just wish I knew why this happened? Why were we presented with this choice? What cruel trick is god playing on us?”

“What if he led you to me?” Lorena said and Lucy’s eyes shot up. “You told me that, told me to trust you, and I did. And you know why?”

She shook her head slightly, an intensely curious look on her face.

“Because god doesn’t make us _do_ anything,” Lorena began to explain. “He doesn’t play tricks or even miracles. All he does, is put people and opportunities in our paths. _We_ decide what to do with them. God put you in my path, and I trusted you because I knew you, from the journal. Or at least… I thought I did.”

“It would have been better to have gotten to know me properly,” Lucy said with little bite. “I should have tried harder, not left you in prison. You have been fighting on the right side the whole time.”

“You made a decision based on everything you knew, and everything you felt.” Lorena took a long, deep breath. “Regret doesn’t always mean you’re wrong, just that you’d have liked to have done differently.”

“In this case, I think I was wrong,” she admitted bluntly.

“Water under the bridge.” Lorena looked into her mug and found it empty. “Well, you should probably attempt some sleep, you still have a decision to make.”

Lucy nearly scowled at her. “Thank you for the reminder that the fate of everyone in this bunker, and a few who can’t be, are in my hands.”

“Don’t think of it like that then.” Lorena shrugged.

“Then what should I think of it as?”

“An opportunity.”


	24. Chapter 24

**Then**

Rufus was sitting next to Jiya, holding her hand as the machines lightly hummed. He couldn’t blame Lucy for not wanting to lose Amy, just as he didn’t want to lose Jiya. Could he really try to put his foot down? To force a reality that would send two women in the bunker to their deaths?

Lucy, his Lucy, would probably forgive him, but they’d never be able to look each other in the eyes again. And if Flynn found out about Lorena… well, sure, the man was in love with Lucy now, but still, he hadn’t given up hope of saving his family.

There was a knock on the door, Dave sticking his head in, “Team meeting.”

“I’ll be right there,” he told him. 

Rufus stood slowly, unsure what the future would hold. He did know that if he stayed in this timeline, he would never, ever, give up on Jiya. He’d find a way to help her. This timeline’s Rufus hadn’t known about Stanley’s real condition in the hospital. That could be an avenue to explore.

“Love you,” Rufus whispered as he kissed the top of Jiya’s head.

The walk to the main room of the bunker was long and cold. Everyone looked tired and tense, except Lorena who had a resigned air about her as she sat on the sofa, feet up on the table. He tucked his hands in his pockets and looked to Lucy.

Everyone looked to Lucy, that hadn’t changed at least.

“Rufus,” she said in the quiet, nearly startling him. “Have you figured out a way to change the timeline back to yours?”

“Ah, yeah.” He rocked on his heels. “Just need to go back to earlier in the day and delay him like fifteen minutes. He’ll still make the meeting, but he’ll miss me. And since we know where he stopped to eat, should be easy enough to do.”

“Are we sure he told the truth?” Christopher asked.

“Well, ah, Scary Flynn was trying to shove a grenade down his throat,” Rufus answered blankly. “Pretty sure he was highly motivated to tell the truth.”

“Good times,” Lorena said nostalgically.

“You’re dead,” Amy told her shortly. “And I don’t exist, if we switch timelines. Doesn’t that bother you?”

Lorena just shrugged. “I’ve been dead a long time. The how doesn’t make much difference to me.”

“That’s… that’s just…” Rufus had no words.

“Rufus,” Lucy drew his attention, her tone very measured. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but whoever goes back in time to delay Jefferson, when they return, they will continue to exist, alive, even if in your timeline they did not?”

“Well, yeah, that’s how… it… works…” Realization dawned on him and he looked between the two doomed women. “If Amy and Lorena come with me, then when we return, they will step into the updated timeline. It won’t change the fact that Amy was never born or that Scary Flynn died, but that doesn’t matter.”

“Holy, shit,” Amy whispered loudly. “It’s like when we come back to a change only we remember. That’s…” she looked at her sister, eyes wide. “That’s literally cheating death.”

“The other timeline is better equipped to take down Rittenhouse,” Lucy told her, eyes a little teary. “But I’m not letting you disappear either. I’m sorry.”

Amy reached for her sister and wrapped her in a tight hug. “Why are you sorry?”

“I… I can’t come with you,” Lucy said into her shoulder as they held each other. “The other Lucy, I would overwrite her, and I can’t do that. She and I went on different paths.” She pulled back and looked at her sister, both with tears streaming down their cheeks. “She has knowledge and experience in that timeline that is invaluable. Rittenhouse. Our mom. But I’ve been given the opportunity to save you, and that’s what I’m going to do.”

Rufus wiped at his eyes as the sisters held each other as if one was going to disappear. One of them was. And he felt awful that he felt so relieved. Lucy had decided to revert back to the other timeline, his timeline, where Jiya was awake and kicking ass and being… perfect.

“Flynn,” Lucy said, wiping her own tears with her sleeve, not quite letting Amy go. “This opportunity is for you as well. You can go, see your husband again, and you can both save your daughter.”

The woman wasn’t looking at Lucy, or anyone, just off into some distance, the casual energy drained from her. What could she be thinking, he had no friggin’ clue. But as much as he worried about how his Lucy would take another returned dead wife, he wasn’t going to say anything about it. He wasn’t going to let a woman die just because her living might cause some relationship drama.

“Flynn is a murderer,” Dave reminded them, though there was little bite left to his words. His face read conflicted.

“Flynn was right from the beginning,” Lucy reminded him. “If I… if we had just listened to her, then maybe our timeline would be the one that is better off.”

Amy frowned at her sister. “I’m not sure I want to think of it that way. I exist in this one.”

“And the other timeline is poorer for your loss,” she quickly replied. “And with all it’s been able to do, against Rittenhouse, Emma, and Cahill… adding you to it will only make it stronger. Rittenhouse won’t stand a chance.”

Lucy pulled Amy into another hug and they held each other tight. 

Rufus cleared his throat and looked at the others in the room. “There is still a fourth seat.”

“I won’t do that to my children,” Denise said firmly, as if it was never in question. “They need a mother who remembers their timeline, all the changes made by not having a fallout with my mother.”

There wasn’t anything that could be argued about that, so he looked to Dave.

“Like Lucy,” Dave began, standing taller than usual, “my other self has intel. Not about Rittenhouse, but about whatever missions he’s been on. Wiping that slate clean could get good people killed. I won’t risk it.”

“Then I guess it’s just the three of us.” The scope of what was about to happen was beginning to hit him bluntly, but slowly. If he played this right, he would go back, delay Jefferson, and return to his timeline… helping two people cheat death.

He never felt so close to playing god than in that moment. But then maybe this was god’s plan from the beginning? It’s a thought he would entertain if he believed in such things. Jiya would certainly have her own thoughts on the matter.

“I want to pack some things,” Amy said as she wiped at her eyes. “Nothing of mine exists over there, so I’d like to bring some diaries, mementos, photos.”

“Yeah, of course.” Rufus wasn’t going to argue. Whether they left now or a few hours from now didn’t make a difference, unless Rittenhouse jumped. He really hoped his luck would hold out. “Just let me know when you’re ready.”

The sisters walked arm in arm down the hall, towards Amy’s room, and it got quiet.

“I’m going home,” Denise spoke up, “to be with my kids until the overwrite happens. I know I won’t remember, but…”

It was a weird twist of logic that actually felt completely right. When you know you’re essentially going to die, you want to be with those who you love the most.

“Before I go, Flynn.” Denise startled the woman when she called out her name. “I have something for you.”

The agent walked over to the console and picked up a large, bulging envelope. “I had a feeling you’d be sticking around if we didn’t swap timelines, so I made everyone think you got transferred to another prison. Your effects were released to go with you.”

She handed Lorena the envelope, the woman letting out a stuttered thank you.

“Godspeed,” Denise told him, then headed towards the exit. 

Dave let out a thoughtful sigh and wandered off. He’d probably be back for the launch, but until then, Rufus would leave him to make his peace with the changes that were coming.

There was a crinkle as Lorena opened the envelope and peered inside. Rufus left her to it, deciding his best course of action was to check on the Lifeboat. Make sure all the systems were in working order, the battery at a hundred percent. This was going to be one of the most important jumps of his life.

A glint caught his eye and he glanced towards it, every little thing was starting to make him nervous. But it was nothing, just Scary Flynn going through the envelope contents, the light catching on her wedding ring.


	25. Chapter 25

**Now**

Lorena was glad she opted to build a complete framework and put heavy insulation into the new addition. Not only did it help to better regulate temperature in the small bedroom, but also limited noise interference from the outside. Everyone else got pretty jealous when they realized this, but no one was willing to fight her for it. She built it after all… and she had proven herself to be the Scary Flynn on several occasions over the past few of months since coming to this timeline.

But Lorena wasn’t mean spirited. She started to work on different parts of the bunker that had been left to neglect over the years of disuse. It kept her hands busy, and parts of her mind occupied.

Rittenhouse was crumbling. At least the part that thought time travel was a good idea. There was dissent in the Council of Elders. Most of them apparently thought time travel was too risky, too costly. The only thing keeping them from scrapping the project was the fact that the team had a time machine too.

Would Lucy be so bold as to go back and do what Flynn failed to achieve? Destroy Rittenhouse and perhaps risk her own birth? They couldn’t risk it.

It was quite possible this war would end in in a stalemate, of a sorts. They could take time travel off the table, fight the war in the present and leave the past alone. Rittenhouse probably thought they would have the advantage as they were buried deep into American institutions. But if the team didn’t have to worry about chasing agents into the past, then they would be free to attack in the present.

Lorena would be more than happy to start literally burning Rittenhouse to the ground.

But what did that mean for Iris?

They didn’t know yet. But they would figure it out. Her and Garcia. They would save their daughter, together.

But otherwise…

It had taken Lorena two and a half weeks to finish up the bedroom after her return from Russian, after she and Garcia said their final goodbyes, romantic relationship wise. About three weeks after that, after a particularly difficult mission where they ran into Carol Preston… Lucy made her way to Garcia’s room. 

They weren’t having sex, not yet. It was only a matter of time. This knowledge stung, a bit, like poking an old wound. But it was indeed old, plenty of scar tissue. There would be no real pain or bleeding. Just one more thing to get used to, like the twinge in her elbow and the ache in her lower back. Consequences of growing old with her life choices.

Some of those choices had been wrong… but not the one to let go of Garcia. Trying to hold onto each other would have been like gripping slivers of broken glass.

Lorena was laying on her bed, mentally mapping out the bunker’s electrical system. She was able to put two recessed lights in the ceiling of her room, and three outlets. Her teammates were wondering if extra outlets could be added to their rooms too.

They thought of her as a convenient handy-man, but also—for reasons Lorena hadn’t quite been able to fathom—they seemed to consider her a friend. Even Amy was coming around, but then that was probably Jiya’s fault.

When the team went on missions, Jiya was quick to drag anyone she could into binge-fests or games. On more than one occasion, Lorena had found herself playing poker against Jiya and Amy. Jiya counted cards and Amy was so fearless you never could tell if she was bluffing. Lorena’s advantage was that she recognized this and played accordingly.

It was… nice. 

It gave a sense of normalcy that she hadn’t felt since the night her world was turned upside down. And normalcy comes with every emotion available, not just anger and grief. Joy was there, she hadn’t seen it in a long time.

“I laugh, and then I feel guilty,” she once told Garcia when he had to stay behind because the team went to the late seventies.

“I do too,” he admitted. “But… we don’t laugh because she’s gone. We’re not happy because we’ve given up. We enjoy the life we have, because we have it. And one day, we will save her, and we’ll need to remember how to smile at her when we do.”

Maybe God did have a reason for saving her that didn’t involve sacrificing herself in the past. She hadn’t removed it from her options, but she was looking for more. Every time the team came back, whatever new changes and intel they had…

The alarm sounded, breaking her concentration. She should probably write down the electrical plans anyway. Running the wiring shouldn’t be an issue, it was whether the transformer could handle the load.

“Report,” Lorena heard Christopher order as she stepped out of her room. 

Everyone was gathering around, per usual. It was like a little ritual.

“Ah, April 11, 1912,” Rufus said and she snapped her head up. “Just outside… Cork, Ireland.”

Lorena found Garcia’s eyes, but tried to not make it obvious that she had done so.

“That’s the _Titanic_ ,” Lucy declared in her typical professor way.

“Nah, I watched that film,” Rufus had a rare moment of doubt in Lucy. “It left from England, not Ireland.”

“Southampton,” provided Connor.

“Yes, but it made two stops before hitting the open water,” Lucy explained, her eyes showing her to be mentally flipping through her historical knowledge. “The French port of Cherbourg, and Cork Harbor in Ireland. Both places it picked up passengers, even dropped off a few.”

“Could Rittenhouse be trying to keep someone from boarding then?” Amy asked. “Trying to save someone who died?”

“Then why not go back a day or two before,” Wyatt pointed out. “Grab them overnight, while they sleep. Hold them until they miss the boat.”

“That would seem easier,” Connor agreed with a slight herm. “But when has Rittenhouse ever been strictly logical.”

“Could be the mail,” Lorena said evenly. She was now looking at Lucy, though watching Garcia. 

“The mail,” Lucy repeated, getting lost in that thought. “It’s quite possible. Almost seven million pieces of mail were lost on the _Titanic_. Who knows what documents Rittenhouse could be looking for?”

“Again, just go to the day before.” Wyatt was annoyingly correct. 

Except, that wouldn’t work if they didn’t know who was sending the documents because it was all clandestine and there was no surviving record of the agent tasked with the job. But if Lorena pointed that out, then they would get fairly suspicious when they discovered her to be extremely accurate in her assessment.

So instead just shrugged. She offered up a possibility, one as good as any.

“Whatever it is,” Christopher called out, “we are on a clock. Figure out what their plan is before the ship sets sail.”

There was the usual hustle and bustle. The geeks prepping the Lifeboat. The soldiers grabbing their guns. 

Garcia checked his mags, idly wandering over to Lorena on his way to the Lifeboat. His slid his gun into its holster and said, “Nothing is written in stone.”

“You don’t need to tell me that.” She smirked, then tried to stifle a chuckle. “Don’t worry about me, you have… fun.”

“I’m not worried about you,” he said and it didn’t hurt, because he wasn’t trying to hurt her. He was only laying out the facts. “A lot of things can go wrong on this mission. And I don’t just mean Lucy and I.”

“Forget about what the journal says,” she said softly. “Follow your instincts, don’t second guess.”

Garcia licked his lips and took a steading breath. “If something happens to me—”

“Then I’ll go to 1912 and kick your ass back into the 21st century,” she said with sinister calm.

He smiled at her. “I don’t doubt it.”

“It’s what friends are for.”

They looked at each other, tried the handle of the door closed between them. It rattled a little, but ultimately stuck fast. There may be an occasional need to check, but those times were getting fewer and farther between. 

“Are you going to tell Lucy, about the journal?” Lorena asked him, a simple curiosity. 

“I haven’t decided,” he admitted. “I… I can’t keep secrets from her, but I can’t put pressure on her either.”

“Well, you’ll figure out.” She smiled at him. “Just, try not to stick your whole foot down your throat.”

He shook his head, suppressing a grin. 

“Let’s go,” Wyatt called out, heading up the stairs.

“That’s your cue, Prince.” She shooed him away.

Garcia gave her one last slightly annoyed look, then headed to the Lifeboat. As always, he followed Lucy in, made sure she didn’t bump her head or lose her balance.

The machine disappeared and a sense of calm came over Lorena. 

There is relief in finality.


	26. Chapter 26

**Now**

“Apologies, your majesty,” the porter bowed his head. “Can I be of any service?”

“No, that will be all,” Flynn dismissed the man with a haughty ease that was all show. 

The porter left and Lucy let out a breath. “That was close.”

“Yeah.” Flynn checked that they were alone, then made sure no one would find the body of the Rittenhouse agent he had shot moments earlier. Well, they might have found him if the ship made it to port, but everyone knew how this story ended.

The other story, it was still up in the air.

“We should get back to our room,” Lucy said, trying to keep herself from opening the large envelope they had taken off the dead man’s body. “I want to have a look at this.”

He nodded, checked to make sure he didn’t have any obvious bloodstains showing, then offered his arm to Lucy. Shoulders back, chin high, he walked out into the hall of the _Titanic_ like he owned it. It was to sell his story, which everyone ate up.

Why yes, he was a dark and mysterious Prussian Prince, having perhaps an illicit affair with an American beauty. Not that he felt he had to hide such things, because who would dare say anything against him?

No one questioned him. Everyone tripped over themselves to help him. 

Just like the journal said they would.

When they originally found the Rittenhouse agent, on land, they stopped him from getting the documents, but lost him in the crowd. Then the mail was hauled onto tenders to take out the ship which was unable to properly dock due to its size. Not that they knew what packaged they were looking for anyway. A quick decision was made, the same one Lucy apparently made in every timeline.

They used money they stole to buy two First Class tickets on the _Titanic_. Lucy and Flynn would go aboard, hopefully stop the agent and get the correspondence. Using their future knowledge, they would make sure to get picked up by the _Carpathia_ and be delivered to Pier 54. Rufus and Wyatt would jump to April 18th, New York City, and meet them.

So they basically had until April 14th, 11:40pm, to complete the mission of stopping the agent and finding whatever he was looking for. They did so in one. Now it was three free days aboard the doomed ship.

Flynn threw his Imperial weight around a bit and got dinner served to their room, instead of dining with the other First Class passengers. His accent, his height, and the very lovely suit he stole seemed to intimidate people. It was useful.

“Here you go,” he said as he sat a tray down on the small dining table. “You need to eat.”

Lucy was sitting at the desk at the foot of the bed, going over the papers. “I probably should,” she said absently, reading over the documents.

“Lucy,” he said her name softly and that dragged her out of the papers.

“Yes, of course.” She sat everything down and moved over to the dining table. “We need to find something to keep those from becoming water damaged. Plastic was invented only five years ago, but it won’t be commercially viable for a while yet.”

“We’ve got time.” He uncovered the plates revealing grilled mutton, and sides. “I’m sure I can find a waxed satchel of some sort.”

“Good.” She took a deep breath and shook her head. “I’m pretty sure most of it is in code. Between the whole team and their various… skill sets, I’m sure we can figure it out.”

“Whatever it is, it’s got to be important,” he agreed, pouring her a glass of red wine.

Lucy picked up her knife and fork, and then faltered, staring through her meal.

“Lucy?” he said softly again.

“Sorry.” She closed her eyes and took a second. “We know what’s going to happen, how many people are going to die, and here we are, sitting down to a lovely meal together, just waiting for it to happen.”

“Me changing the _Hindenburg_ … it erased your sister,” he said cautiously, and her eyes snapped up at him. “You said the present isn’t perfect, but it’s ours.”

“I know what I said,” she told him firmly. “And I know that no matter how hard we try to keep Rittenhouse from changing things… history does change. All Rufus did… was make a man late for a meeting… and everything we know turned upside down.” She looked away. “How many changes have we made, how many disappeared family, reappeared family… that just goes unnoticed.”

“I imagine more than we can fathom,” he replied quietly. 

They sat there, listening to the slight creaking of a ship sailing through water. With a heart heavy sigh, Lucy started to cut into her mutton. Pushing it around a bit before finally taking a bite.

“We can…” Flynn started to say, trailed off a bit, then continued. “We can try to slow the ship down, if even for a few minutes. That might be all it needs.”

“Even a few seconds,” she whispered.

“We have three days,” he landed on a compromise. “You have time to decide.”

“I have time?” her eyes shot back up to him again. “Shouldn’t this be _our_ decision, not just mine?”

“Ah…” he stumbled for a moment.

“Everyone always leans on me.” She put her cutlery down and sat back in her chair. “I know I like to be in situations I can control, but I didn’t choose this life, this… responsibility.”

“There’s a lot of things we don’t choose,” he replied, crossing his arms and leaning on the table. “Our family, who we love… our fate.”

“We can choose our family,” her voice was a tad bit broken, but there was strength there. “I choose to accept Amy, to not accept Rittenhouse, and to accept everyone in that bunker as the closet family I have.”

Flynn smiled at her, unable to stop a sense of pride coming over him at her declaration. The Lucy of the journal may have been impressive, but she may not quiet stack up to the Lucy in front of him.

“As for love,” she paused for a moment, “it’s a many splendid thing. Comes in all shapes and sizes. And while, true, the heart wants what the heart wants… we can decide if we’re going to give into it.”

Heat came to his cheeks and he had to glance away for a moment. He knew what his heart wanted now. It had tucked Lorena away, like a box of treasured photos kept safely on the top shelf of the closet. Only to be brought out when nostalgia deemed it necessary, but always fated to return to the closet, the door shut. Now all the open spaces of his heart were filled with the tiny, brilliant historian.

“As for fate… we decide that too.”

He tilted his head and gave her a questioning look, more curious than doubting.

“Fate doesn’t make us do anything we weren’t already going to do,” she explained. “We got on this ship because it was the decision we made based on the situation, which itself was based on other’s decisions. All fate is… is understanding not that we have no choice, but that we always make the same one.”

“It is meant to be…” he said softly, “because we decide what we do, always will.”

“Exactly.” She gave him a small smile, then took a deep breath. “Our dinner is getting cold and time is getting late. Let’s talk about something else.”

Lucy grabbed her glass and sipped at the red wine. They turned the conversation onto happier things that didn’t involve the impending doom over their heads. It was a nice and relaxed conversation, just like the ones they had in his room. 

If he was forced to admit it, Lucy was easier to talk to than Lorena, even before that night in 2014. It wasn’t that him and Lorena didn’t talk, it’s just that they connected differently. An ideal date with Lorena would be horseback riding and camping under the stars. With Lucy, it would be a trip around a museum, or historic location, just listening to the utter joy of knowledge spilling out of her. 

“It’s getting late,” she said once dinner was finished and indeed enough time had passed. 

They were both extremely tired. Their day included chasing the agent, getting aboard the _Titanic_ , convincing everyone he was a Prussian Prince, finding the agent again, fighting him, killing him, hiding his body, and then flirting with the idea of mortality.

It seemed reasonable that an early night was in order.

“You take the bed, I’ll…” Flynn looked about the cabin. There was no way the spindly wooden chairs would comfortably hold his frame. They might also break if he moved wrong. There was a sofa in the room, though his legs would probably hang over at the knees. “I’ll make due with the sofa.”

“The bed is a double,” Lucy pointed out. “And we’re going to need to be rested and in top shape once… we hit the iceberg. We can be adults.”

“Ah…” he stalled, remembering the journal mentioned this detail.

Fate is simply a decision you were going to make anyway.

“Which side would you like?” he asked.


	27. Chapter 27

**Now**

“Are we really doing this?” Amy asked as Jiya dragged her down the bunker hallway.

“How can we not?” Jiya was downright giddy. “You like this movie, don’t lie.”

“Of course, I like the movie,” Amy snorted. “I’m just trying to figure out why you want to watch it?”

Jiya let out an exasperated sigh. “Because, once the team returns, it will be fresh in our minds.”

“You realize we won’t remember any changes.”

“Totally not the point.”

Amy glanced over at Lorena who was making herself a cup of coffee. She heard the entire conversation, and only had this to add, “I can’t make heads or tails out of either. But it’s her process.”

“You are on popcorn duty!” Jiya yelled at her as she flopped Amy down onto the sofa.

“Yes, sir.” Lorena gave her a mock salute and grabbed a bag of popcorn from the cabinet.

They say home is where the heart is, but that’s a lie. Home is where you know how to work the controls for the shower. Where you know where the vacuum is kept. Where you know to add an extra five seconds to the microwave’s popcorn button for maximum popping. 

And where you feel safe, unafraid, and welcomed.

She really wanted to be angry at Garcia. 

She had a whole list of grievances that only made sense if one was irrational, petty, and selfish.

She wanted to be angry because it was easier than being happy. 

“Come on, Scary Flynn,” Jiya shouted at her when the movie was towards its end, “back me up here.”

Both young women were now staring at her, looking to Lorena to bring weight to support their individual arguments.

“Well,” Lorena took a long measured breath. “When estimating the physical space available, yes, two people could fit on the door.”

“Hah!” Amy shouted in Jiya’s face.

“However,” Lorena added in her mom voice. “The door is on water, with waves. So, without proper balance distribution, then Jack trying to climb on it could lead it to flip, throwing off Rose, and the whold thing possibly sinking.”

“Nuh,” Jiya touted at Amy.

“That still doesn’t mean that Jack couldn’t have climbed up onto the door,” Lorena just kept going on with her explanation, even as Amy blew a raspberry at Jiya. “But they both had a traumatic experience, and hadn’t calmed down yet, so it’s understandable that once the door started to tip, Rose panicked. Jack stopped trying because he doesn’t want to knock Rose into the water. Once Rose calmed down, he should have tried again, this time moving in counterbalance with each other.”

“So wait,” Jiya scrunched up her brow, “whose side are you on?”

Lorena simply smiled. “Neither, and both.” 

They were not very impressed with her.

Amy looked at Jiya. “We need another opinion.”

“Connor!” Jiya shouted. The two stood up and went to hunt the man down.

The very last part of the movie was playing, the two ghosts meeting at the staircase. Rose had never stopped being in love with Jack. Jack died before he had a chance to find out if he could do the same.

Where could Garcia and Lucy be right now? What could they be doing?

Lorena turned off the TV and tried not to think about it. Just because she knew her romantic relationship with Garcia was over… didn’t mean there wasn’t some residual sting knowing _exactly_ what they could be doing at that very moment. 

But it would fade in time, and she could be happy for the couple.

It would be easier to be angry at them, but easy isn’t always right.

Dinner rolled around, these evenings turning into their own version of _Chopped_. They looked at what they had and tried to figure out what would go together. And by that, they plugged ingredients into Google search and saw what was spit out.

One minor fire later, and they were eating at the table in comfortable semi-silence. 

“I’ll only play gin rummy if actual gin is involved,” Amy told Jiya.

“I think I can arrange that,” the woman said, standing. “Connor might have some in his not-so-secret stash.”

Lorena sat back, staring at the dishes on the table, wondering if they would gather themselves up, walk over to the sink, trip and fall in.

“Flynn?” 

“Hmmm?” Lorena was roused out of fantasy in which some small change in the past gave them all superpowers so she wouldn’t have to get up. “Yeah, sorry, I know. I’m on dishes duty.”

“Well, yes,” Amy agreed. “But I wanted to ask you something.”

It did not go unnoticed to Lorena that there was no one else around at the moment. “Ask me what?”

Amy leaned a little bit closer, lowering her voice. “What were the looks you and Tall Flynn were giving each other earlier?”

“Pardon?” she acted confused.

“Cut the crap.” Amy wasn’t having any of it. “You two recognized something, and it wasn’t just the significance of the date. And, to be honest, your little pre-jump pow wow has been bugging me all day.”

The woman was perceptive, there was no getting around that. “It was mentioned in the journal. Not all missions are, so, when this one popped up, we checked if our details matched up.”

“It was in the journal,” Amy said with a tense jaw, “and you didn’t feel the need to mention it? Details that could be handy?”

Lorena was pretty sure Amy didn’t want her sister’s sex life aired out in front of everyone. “The details were scant regarding the mission. Sometimes the journal is like that, annoyingly so. We compared notes in case there were any differences, and Garcia will share _if_ anything becomes relevant.”

None of it was a lie, and that was the best way to not tell the truth.

“Do you really think Garcia will let anything happen to your sister?” Lorena asked bluntly.

Amy tapped her finger on the table and thought that over. “No, no he wouldn’t.”

“Then you have nothing more to worry about than you usually do,” Lorena assured her a smile.

“I have scotch,” Jiya declared as she came back into the area. “The gin is probably in Connor’s ultra-super-secret stash… and since Tall Flynn isn’t here to help—and I’m too lazy to grab the stepladder—then scotch will have to do.”

She received no complaint, and so they sat down to play scotch rummy, which was gin rummy with random rule changes every twenty minutes like a drunk game of Calvin Ball. But they enjoyed themselves, and that’s what mattered.

“It’s getting late,” Amy said, then dislocated her jaw as she yawned. 

“They aren’t back yet,” Jiya frowned, looking at the empty space for the Lifeboat.

“Time is relative,” Lorena reminded her. “Time spent back there doesn’t always match up to here.”

“I know that,” Jiya responded like an annoyed child. “But this one of the most doomed moments in history. And Rufus can’t swim.”

“Have you gotten any flashes?” Lorena asked.

“No…”

“You only involuntary get them when Rufus is in trouble,” she pointed out, as calmly as she could. “And I believe you know this, which is why you haven’t already tried to look back and find them.”

“You are very annoying,” Jiya was unamused, but not angry. 

“Get some rest,” it was a gentle order. “If you’re still worried, you can go poking around tomorrow.”

After a bit of coaxing, Jiya unwound from the tight ball she was starting to pull herself into. This meant Lorena had no more excused to not finish with the dishes. 

Getting them washed, dried, and put up, she was now the only person in the common area as the two young women had gone off to bed. Normally Lorena would take this time to read, or watch something not chosen for her. She didn’t need to sleep that much, so she’d grab some private time when she could.

But Lorena felt drained. While the coffin was already full of nails, another one would be driven in when Garcia and Lucy returned. Doing the right thing can be exhausting, but anger and pettiness wouldn’t get her daughter back.

Lucy was the key to… everything. Of this, Lorena was dead positive. 

She just had to figure out the how.


	28. Chapter 28

**Now**

The morning of April 12th, 1912, Lucy turned and curled into the warm mass beside her. It felt… nice… and safe. It seems like a rather simple thing, but after fighting in a war against her very blood, being hurt by Wyatt, and being on a literally doomed ship… safe held multitudes.

And Flynn looked so peaceful, worry lines smoothed out, at least from what she could see under the poof of hair that had fallen forward. She wanted to reach out and gently push it back.

Her hand moved, but his eyes shot open before she could do anything.

“Morning,” she said with a smile.

Flynn had apparently swallowed three frogs during the night. He awkwardly cleared his throat, then proceeded to remove himself from the bed. “Good morning.”

“Don’t worry.” Her smile got a little bit broader. “You were a gentle and responsive lover.”

Make that five frogs.

Lucy chuckled then extricated herself from the bed as well. She had stolen the luggage of someone about to leave on a different ship. A woman who was about her size. Thankfully there was a night shift of a modest cut. 

“How long were you holding onto that one?” Flynn said dryly, the era-typical long johns he was wearing hugging in either the right or wrong places, depending on how you wanted to look at it.

And Lucy wanted to look.

Then she shook her head. “Trying to keep my mind off what’s going to happen.”

“Why…” Flynn started, pausing to lick his lips and capture his thoughts. “Why don’t you stay in the cabin, use room service, and look through those papers with fresher eyes. I’ll find us a watertight satchel, and plot our escape. We’ll want to be positioned to catch a lifeboat.”

“We’ll want number seven,” she said, remembering the details. “It was the first to be lowered into the water, it wasn’t even half full. Many passengers didn’t take the sinking seriously in the beginning, so, we shouldn’t have to fight for a spot.”

“I’ll locate it.” He started to gather his clothes and a thought came to Lucy. 

“Are you going to be okay?” she asked him.

“What do you mean?”

“Over fifty children will die,” Lucy answered quietly, her voice breaking a bit. “Children that will be playing on deck.”

Flynn looked away for a moment, eyes going distant. “I won’t be okay. But I’ll be okay enough.”

He dressed and left, leaving Lucy to the paperwork, and her thoughts. She wanted so badly to go and talk to people. Not just the famous ones, but the ones who didn’t make it. To hear their stories. Maybe she could write them down. See that they find their way to _Titanic_ historians. 

But she was afraid it would be Lincoln all over again. Would she not be able to stop herself from warning everyone?

No one would listen to her right now anyway. She might as well be named Cassandra.

Lucy warred with herself, debating what was the right thing to do. She would say that things were simpler, in the beginning. But they never were, not from the moment she stood in front of Garcia Flynn next to a raging inferno.

When they went to bed that night, she curled herself into Flynn.

“Lucy?” his voice was so soft.

“Just hold me,” she whispered. 

A moment’s hesitation, and he slipped his arms around her, drawing her against his chest.

Despite the impending doom that loomed over them, she fell asleep, knowing she was safe.

When she woke up on April 13th, she was alone. She could hear Flynn moving around in the small washroom. She sat up, dangling her feet over the bed, deciding which purloined dress she would be wearing that day. Though, granted, she rarely left the room. 

How could she look at all those people, knowing their fate?

The door swung open and Flynn stepped out. He was clothed, but his shirt was unbuttoned and a towel was around his neck, his hair not quite dry. It was hardly the first time she had seen him in some form of slight undress, but this was the first time since Lorena returned…

“Did you want to explore the ship today?” he asked her, moving to his own luggage to finish getting dressed.

Lucy swung her feet slightly as she thought about it. “I suppose I should. Otherwise people might get suspicious of my continued absence.”

“They already are,” he admitted, his back turned as he buttoned up his shirt. “But I think it will work to our advantage. Seems the prevailing rumor is that we are having an affair, you are pregnant—hence staying in the room to hide symptoms—and we are illicitly fleeing to the States. It’s all rather scandalous.”

She covered her mouth as she laughed.

He chuckled with her. “We can play that up, use it as reason to both get on the lifeboat. I know you said it was half full anyway, but, always good to have a backup plan.”

“Of course.” She nodded, willing to admit to herself that she was afraid that something could go wrong. But, she had Flynn here with her. He would make sure nothing happened to her. “Is it because of your ring?”

“I’m sorry, what?” He turned to look at her.

“I know you said your marriage is over,” Lucy gestured to his hand, “but you still wear your ring.”

“Oh, ah.” He lifted his hand and looked at the offending object. “It has its uses. A man of my age, unmarried? It would be suspicious in most of the eras we go to, or at least I’d appear less trustworthy.”

“Of course,” she chided herself for not thinking about that. As much as she had issues stemming from her marital status in the past, men were not totally immune either.

He simply shrugged and grabbed a vest, pulling it on. “It’s also a bit of a habit. I’ve gotten use to the weight, even if I no longer have reason for it.”

“I…” she stopped, then decided to push forward. “I noticed Lorena doesn’t wear hers.”

“She lost it,” he admitted, finishing with his vest. “She’d often take it off when she slept, even had a special place on the nightstand for it. But after the attack, she couldn’t go back for it.”

Lucy didn’t know what to say to that. She already said sorry so many times. Sorry that it happened to them. Sorry that it was her family who did it. Sorry that… she was secretly pleased a marriage imploded because it meant…

“We’re at peace with the past,” he told her as if he read her mind. “At least the part that involves our relationship. A part of us will always miss the old days, but we can’t go back to it. We’ll save Iris, and we’ll co-parent the best we can.”

“I know you can do it, both of you,” she said with a soft smile.

“Thank you,” he replied a bit shyly.

Lucy looked around the cabin. “I think it’s time I made an appearance. Add a little more credence to the pregnancy rumors. That way we can really sell it if it comes to that.”

He seemed to swallow his tongue, then coughed. “Will you be okay? Seeing all those people, knowing which are going to die?”

“I won’t be okay… but I’ll be okay enough.”


	29. Chapter 29

**Now**

“What’s the point of protecting history if we can’t save the people in it?” Lucy said as she leaned against the desk in the cabin.

“Have you changed your mind?” Flynn asked her from across the room. It was late, they just got back from having dinner. Lucy taking the opportunity to talk to several individuals, most of whom wouldn’t make it.

“No.” She sighed, closing her eyes for a moment. “We could save all these people, and only be condemning countless others to die or not exist. I just… hate this part of the job.”

“You’re a good person, Lucy,” he told her. “This right here, your ability to empathize and care, it proves you’re not Rittenhouse.”

Whenever Flynn told her she wasn’t Rittenhouse, she believed it more and more. And when he looked at her, it was with such reverence and trust. Looked at her like she was the good person he believed her to be. The proud smile that somehow didn’t come off at patronizing when she talked about history.

“Thank you,” she whispered. Then she was moving forward, light on her feet, stopping right in front of him.

“Lucy?” he said quietly as she stared up into his eyes. 

Her hands ran up his chest, grabbing the lapels of his jacket. She pulled him down and he offered no resistance. Their lips met and it was everything she dreamt it would be. One of his hands came up behind her to tip her head so he could deepen the kiss as the other held her around her waist. He tasted of wine and smelt of bergamot. 

Lucy began to step backwards, pulling him with her even as she pushed his jacket from his shoulders. When they got to the bed, she spun them around so she could push him to sit on the edge. 

She had begun to pull his shirt from his waistband when he put his hands on hers. “Lucy?”

“I want this,” she whispered against his lips. “I’ve wanted this for a long time, I was just too afraid to take it.”

“I would never hurt you,” he said, running his hands up and through her hair, pulling down the gathered locks so they cascaded around her face.

“I know.” She smiled, a weight off them at their confessions. “I’m not afraid anymore, because with you, I know I’m safe.”

Lucy went in for another kiss, but Flynn dodged it. This surprised Lucy who pulled back to see his face at war. But at war with what? She knew his feelings for her, her feelings for him… and his feelings for Lorena…

“There’s something I need to tell you,” he began, licking his lips as he fought for his words. “I have never lied to you, but I have omitted something.”

Not particularly enjoying the sound of that, Lucy stepped back. She missed his warmth, and she still felt safe, but she wasn’t going to risk getting hurt again. 

“In the journal,” he started to tell her, “it talks about this mission. About us ending up on the _Titanic_.”

“What?” Lucy took another step back. “If you knew what the agent was going after, why didn’t you say something?”

“Because I didn’t have the details,” he admitted, frustrated. “I knew it was paperwork that had gone missing, but I knew nothing of the agent, or even what the documents were, if it was a letter or a package, who was it addressed to... I tried to keep this from happening, I made sure we went to the mail first. It just… didn’t work out.”

They were made by the agent who got away. Without knowing exactly what they were looking for, there was no way to prevent having to chase the man onto the doomed ship. But this was hardly the first time the journal only gave them a detail, and not the whole picture. “There’s more to this, isn’t there?”

“Yes,” he breathed the word more than spoke it. He took a moment to center himself, or perhaps brace himself for her reaction. “It said that… you and I… that… this happens. That we end up… together.”

Lucy became numb, stepping back into the dining table. She gripped the edges and considered what he was saying. “The journal tells you that we… we sleep together, tonight?”

“Not exactly.” He couldn’t seem to look at her. “It didn’t say what night, didn’t even make clear it was here or on the _Carpathia_ , but, to the Lucy who wrote the journal… it happened.”

“And you weren’t going to tell me?” she shouted, a burst of anger at a sudden feeling of loss of control.

“I didn’t want you to feel manipulated,” he was suddenly just as angry. “Not everything in the journal comes to pass. And for the longest time I thought it must be wrong because…” he bowed his head and tried to calm his breathing. “The Lucy of the journal was very impressive, but she doesn’t compare to you.”

He glanced up at her, his eyes glistening, pain on his face and she got the feeling she was watching his heart break in real time.

“I didn’t fall in love with you because the journal told me to,” he finally said, rubbing his palms on his legs. “I fell in love with you because I met you. Because you are kind, and strong, and beautiful, and smart… and because my heart gave itself away to you without consulting me first.”

Lucy glanced away so she could try to blink the tears from her eyes. She hadn’t meant to fall for him either. He had been the enemy, though she always knew there was more to him. She always knew he would never hurt her.

“This could have played out so many different ways,” he kept talking in that low, raspy voice of his. “We could have stepped off the _Carpathia_ on Pier 54 without so much as holding hands. I wasn’t going to pressure you into this. You don’t owe me anything. But I couldn’t… I couldn’t let this continue without you knowing the full truth.”

Lucy wanted to be angry at him for hiding this from her, a lie of omission. But he wanted her to make her own choices, free from whatever her other selves had done. How would she have responded, if he told her this back when they first met? When he came into the bunker? When his wife…

“Lorena.” The pieces fell into place for her. “She read the journal, did she… does she know? Was this in her journal?”

“Nearly exactly the same, as far as well can tell,” he admitted. Lucy started to speak and in a rare action he cut her off. “It wouldn’t have changed anything. We watched our daughter die. We watched each other die. We can’t come back from that. At most, knowing what the journal said just made it easier to let go, to save ourselves, before we drowned each other.”

Lucy squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head. 

Rittenhouse, the time machine, the journal… hell, the ship she was currently standing in. All of it seemed to mock her. Every time she turned around, the universe went to new depths to wrestle away control of her life. 

There was a rustling, Flynn had stood up from the bed. “I’ll, ah, take a walk around the deck. I can sleep on the sofa when I get back.”

“Stop,” she said, and he froze, not even taking that first step to leave.

He didn’t want to hurt her, at least, not as much as she would have been hurt if she found out he kept this information from her. And Lorena had kept the secret too, not using it to exert any kind of her own control over either of them. Lucy could appreciate their motives, their attempts to minimize the pain.

But there was still the fact the journal…

“Why did I write all these things?” she asked to the universe, if it would listen. “Why did I get you involved?”

“I don’t know.” He frustratingly shuffled his feet. “The journal doesn’t say, believe me, I looked.”

She wanted to tell him she always believed him… except at the beginning when she had her doubts.

“I don’t know if,” he continued, “if I stole the Mothership first, and that’s how we met, timelines ago. Or if you found me in that bar, knowing I’d do anything to destroy Rittenhouse.”

“Either way… we found each other,” her whispered words were heavy in the air.

“We always do,” he said so quietly she almost didn’t hear it.

“I wrote those words, knowing you’d read them,” she tried to make sense of things. “I could have torn the pages out, but I wanted you to read them. Why?”

He said nothing because he recognized she wasn’t talking to him. The only person who could answer the question was herself. She was the one who made those choices in timelines long past.

Would she do so again? If the timeline had to be reset, would she write a journal and tell herself about this mission… about her and Flynn…

“Fate is decisions we’d make anyway…”


	30. Chapter 30

**Now**

“Welcome back!” Jiya called out as the team descended the stairs. “How’d it go?” 

Wyatt had walked down first, followed by Lucy. He jutted his thumb behind him at her. “Those two gave us a heart attack by sailing off aboard the _Titanic_.”

“No way,” Jiya was impressed.

“Did you bring me a souvenir?” Amy asked as she walked up.

“I brought you coded documents.” Lucy held up the watertight-ish satchel Flynn had stolen to protect the Rittenhouse papers.

“Ooooooo, grabby hands.” Amy snatched the offered item. Her sister was pretty good with codes and patterns. The woman would no doubt enjoy herself.

Lucy felt Flynn’s solid presence behind her, as she often would. It was never overbearing, overstepped, or unwelcomed. It was simply a literal presentation of how he always stood behind her, supported her in whatever she did. 

And now…

There was the usual hustle and bustle of the return, Christopher asking for details and the team curious about changes. Lucy and Flynn’s presence on the _Titantic_ didn’t change its ultimate outcome. So many people died, and all they could do was watch, even as they internally screamed for people to get on the damn lifeboats.

This realization led to a very dark and sullen moment. It would be something Lucy would never forget. Huddled in Flynn’s arms, blocking out her sight and muffling the sounds. Flynn had gone to war, this… was not the worst he had ever seen.

It would hit her, later, but she had people who would be there for her.

“Oh, hey, you made it into the movie,” Rufus said, trying to break the melancholy. He was scanning through something on his phone. “The couple who were last on, first off, of the _Titanic_. Looks like basically a cameo, just another of the people Jack and Rose run across. And the scene when the first lifeboat is cast off.”

“I remember this, but crap, who played them?” Jiya leaned over his shoulder. “Oh, that’s right. Ralph Fiennes and Rachel Weisz.”

“What?” Flynn crossed his arms and looked perturbed. “He’s English.” Then he mumbled. “And not nearly as tall.”

“Yup.” Jiya had now reached up under Rufus’s arm to control the scrolling as she rested her chin on his shoulder. “Fiennes was straight off _The English Patient_ so a tad bit of a stunt casting. Weisz would star in _The Mummy_ two years later. And in 2005, they would team up again in _The Constant Gardner_.”

Amy started cackling. “Oh my god, those two were you?”

“What?” she asked her sister, not quite liking the grin on her face.

“I’ll tell you later.” She couldn’t stop laughing.

Speaking of talking to people later, Lucy looked around and saw Lorena hadn’t moved from where she was sitting at one of the kitchen tables. She had been reading and drinking something hot when they came back. Now she just leaned back in the chair, feet propped up, watching the usual craziness with an amused expression on her face.

Once Christopher was satisfied with the debrief, the group broke up to do their usual after-mission decompresses.

Lucy glanced at Flynn and he nodded. They had plenty of time on the _Carpathia_ to discuss what they were going to do when they got back to the bunker. This in mind, Lucy let herself get pulled towards the room she shared with Amy as the woman talked about the fan-girling Lucy made over the movie, which she doesn’t remember doing because of the timeline change.

Eventually, once in the relative privacy of the room, Lucy told Amy everything.

“Please tell me you did it in a car.” Amy was wide-eyed and damn near giddy.

“No, in a bed.” Lucy was annoyed, but found herself unable to be too perturbed at her sister’s antics.

Amy held her hands out in disbelief. “But it was right there.”

“Have you seen the size of turn of the century automobiles?” Lucy frowned. “No way would Flynn fit in one doing… that.”

“So you admit you thought about it.”

“Amy!”

Her sister laughed and pulled her into a side hug. “I’m just glad you two stopped dancing around. It was very nauseating to watch. I mean, romantic movies are nice to watch, but hell to live through.”

“We weren’t that bad.” Lucy rolled her eyes.

“Oh, Lucy.” Amy patted her head. “So naïve.”

Lucy grabbed a pillow from the bed and wacked Amy with it. The two laughed and goofed around for a moment. 

“You really do love him,” Amy said once they caught their breaths, her words spoken with a touch of reverence.

“Yeah, I really do.” Lucy couldn’t deny it anymore. “He… understands me on a level… that even the journal couldn’t lay bare.”

“Well, I’m glad.” Amy gave her a soft and genuine smile. “I remember watching you constantly backing away from things you love because… because of mom, because our family, because this damn war. It’s good to see you finally take the happiness you deserve.”

“Thank you, Ames.” 

Lucy wrapped her sister in a hug, her own thoughts going back to her childhood. Constantly trying to make their mother happy. Then stepping out and taking a chance, only to get into that horrible wreck. It scared her, not only for the loss of control, but the thought that the one time she tried to do what she wanted to, the universe sent her a clear message.

She didn’t date Alice in college because of what her family would think. She stayed at Stanford, even though she hated it, because of her mother. Not to mention all the macro-decisions she had made over the years.

Her other self must have been so lonely, without Flynn. Or even the superficial balm of Wyatt. Sure, she had her sister there to talk to, but there are parts of the psyche and heart that a sister can’t help with.

But now she had both. 

For all the universe had taken from her over the years… it had given her back Amy, and brought her to Flynn. 

“So I guess this means I’m moving out?” Amy asked good-naturedly as she pulled out of the hug. 

“That’s up in the air,” she admitted. “This is still new, there are a lot of things to consider, least of all Lorena.”

Amy opened her mouth to speak, then paused, as if she was remembering something.

“What?”

“Pretty sure Scary Flynn is a-okay with what went down on your mission.” Amy realized what she said. “Speaking of—”

“Don’t.” Lucy stopped her. She wasn’t getting into those kinds of details just yet. “And yes, I’m pretty sure she does. Flynn should be talking to her right now, letting her know how things have progressed.”

“You know she’s okay with you two.”

“I know.” Lucy took a deep breath. “But I was okay with you practicing violin in our room even though it literally sounded like a cat being murdered.”

“Hey!” Amy pouted. “I… got better.”

“Eventually.” Lucy tried not to laugh. “Anyway. This is a small bunker, and there’s a lot of history. We just need to… be aware of boundaries and not force emotional labor on others when we don’t have to.”

“Yeah, that would make things less awkward around here.” Amy nodded, then her head popped up. “Does Wyatt know that you and Tall Flynn did the deed on the mission?”

“No.” Lucy admitted. “We had a few days to get comfortable with each other, so when we got off the _Carpathia_ , it wasn’t obvious.”

“Okay…” Amy nodded, then grinned like the Cheshire cat. “Can I tell him?”

Lucy had no issue with that, nor did she think Flynn would mind, so long as he had a view of the proceedings. But Amy couldn’t run off just yet. Lucy had one more thing to do before she could allow herself to take any further steps with Flynn…


	31. Chapter 31

**Now**

It had gotten late, everyone milling about in their rooms, not quite ready to go to sleep. Lucy really wanted to slip into Flynn’s room, curl beside him and talk until they fell asleep… or, other things. Whatever speed they felt they needed to take their relationship.

Which is why Lucy found herself knocking on Lorena’s door.

“I got you a souvenir.” Lucy held up a notepad after the woman opened the door. “I ran across Thomas Andrews Jr., the _Titanic’s_ primary architect. I asked him a lot of technical questions. I don’t really understand the answers, but I thought you’d appreciate them.” She had spent the last hour transcribing the conversation from memory.

“Oh, nice.” Lorena took the offered notepad. “Did you ask him about the rivets?”

“I did, actually.” Lucy followed her into her room, flipping the notepad to page three even as Lorena was holding it.

“Oh good. Thanks for this.” Lorena looked up from the notepad and smiled. One might think she didn’t know what happened. She was giving Lucy an out if she wanted it.

Lucy let the door close behind her, giving them some privacy. Flynn had already spoken to her, but Lucy needed to hear from the woman herself that things would be okay. 

“Right here,” Lorena said, pointing to a spot on her side just below the rib cage.

Lucy blinked. “What?”

“When he snores, it’s because he’s on his back,” Lorena explained. “Give him a gentle poke right here, and he’ll turn onto his side for the rest of the night.”

“Oh… uh…” That wasn’t at all how Lucy imagined this conversation starting.

“Took me over three years to figure that one out.” Lorena laughed at herself.

“Ah, thanks.” Lucy recovered and cleared her throat. “That’s actually really good to know.”

“Anyway,” Lorena held up the notepad, “thank you for this. I’ll be pouring over it for a few days. I was never into shipbuilding but what civil engineer isn’t fascinated by the structural collapse of the _Titanic_?”

Lucy nodded and smiled, getting the feeling that while Lorena was genuinely happy with the gift, she was also subtly trying to get Lucy to leave. Normally Lucy would follow the social cue, but if there was going to be a confrontation or blow out, then it needed to happen now.

“I can’t imagine,” Lucy said sadly, “to lose your husband and read what was in the journal, what… I wrote.”

Lorena’s shoulders dropped but she remained tense. She worked her jaw for a second. “Yes. It hurt, a lot. But that was years ago. We’ve both had time to move on. We are over, and I don’t know how plainer to say that, except maybe to point out that we can’t even have sex without bawling our eyes out.”

That was quite possible a little extra information than she didn’t need, even though she had suspected as much.

“Do you want my literal blessing?” Lorena added. “Because you have it.”

“I want to know why you’re so upset,” Lucy held her ground. “It also feels like you’re deflecting.”

Lorena crossed her arms, then uncrossed them, and defeatedly slumped against the desk she built. “I always knew this day would happen, but there are some things you can’t fully prepare for.”

“I don’t want to make you—”

“No, stop,” Lorena said firmly. “For someone who always wants to be in control, you’re very quick to self-sacrifice. You don’t want to hurt other people.” There was an intensity in her eyes and voice that was akin to something Lucy would see in Flynn. “But sometimes, things just hurt, because that’s what they do. You can’t throw yourself on the emotional grenade every time.”

Defiance kicked up in Lucy, steeling her jaw. “I will not be the other woman. I wouldn’t when Jessica came back, and I won’t be here either. That’s just being a morally decent person.”

“You’re not the other woman.” Lorena didn’t seem fazed by her outburst. “The other woman is the one who died that night. And she is never coming back.”

Had Lorena changed so much to that completely different of a person? The way she and Flynn talked about themselves, in their past, it did seem so. “Then who are you?”

Lorena mirthlessly chuckled, shrugging her shoulders. “A little jealous. I do know what Garcia is capable of.” She grinned. “You have some fun days ahead of you.”

Lucy blushed, she knew she’d only gotten a taste of things to come.

“This was never not going to hurt,” Lorena continued, quietly, “seeing your ex with someone else, no matter how the relationship ended. But it’s nothing that a few pints ice cream can’t fix.”

“I don’t want to keep hurting you, if—”

“What did I say about this self-sacrificing bullshit?” Lorena was clearly not impressed, giving Lucy a rather annoyed look. “Oh, yeah, don’t.”

“You really are the mean one,” Lucy snapped back, but she couldn’t be angry at Lorena as she didn’t seem to be malicious. “Is it cathartic?”

Lorena smiled and chuckled. “A bit, yeah.”

The two women stared at each other for a moment, the air changing between them. Lucy believed her when she said she was okay with her being with Flynn. There was no doubt that if Lorena took umbrage with the relationship, she wouldn’t be bashful. 

Lucy chuckled. “Why do I feel as though you’d reenact the _Cask of Amontillado_ on me if you truly didn’t want me and Flynn getting together?”

“Now you get it.” Lorena winked.

A full-belly-laugh escaped Lucy, and she felt better for it. 

Lorena was smiling at her, a little sadness behind it, but the woman was happy for her.

“We’re going to save Iris,” Lucy promised her. “I will never give up, and neither will Flynn.”

Her smile drooped a bit, the sadness showing through a bit more, but there was resolve there. “I know. And one day, this will all be over, and we’ll all find our happiness.” Lorena snorted. “Even Wyatt.”

Lucy laughed and covered her mouth. 

“Oh, hey, does he know about you and Garcia?” 

“No.” Lucy frowned apologetically. “I already promised Amy she could tell him.”

“Fair. Just let me know when and where, I want a front row seat.”

“Deal.”


	32. Chapter 32

**Then**

Lorena was throwing water on her face in the bathroom. It was a surreal feeling, knowing that she would be reunited with her dead husband in just a matter of a few hours. 

And she’d have to tell him she couldn’t save their daughter. 

And she knew that Lucy…

What was waiting for her over there except the ability to keep breathing? 

The door opened and she startled, just a bit, but it was enough to know she was off her game. But also, who doesn’t put a lock on the damn bathroom door? Had they really been living this this? It was a major downgrade from the facilities at the prison.

She looked up to see Lucy.

“Sorry,” Lorena mumbled. “I was just leaving.”

“I, ah, I wanted to talk to you, actually,” Lucy said, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear.

“You’re not going to remember,” Lorena reminded her as the door closed.

Lucy’s eyes snapped up. “But my other self will still know that I did you wrong.”

“So say your absolution,” Lorena spoke more harshly than she really meant, but her world was opening up at the same time it was crashing down and she just… didn’t know what to feel.

Anger was apparently on the menu for Lucy. “You may have been right, the whole time, but did you really have to go blowing up your way through history?”

“That’s what you asked me to do,” Lorena shot back. “You came to me. You wrote those things in the journal.”

“That wasn’t me,” Lucy nearly yelled, then tears threatened to gather in her eyes. “It was never going to be me… neither of us were supposed to exist.”

“Lucy,” she said softly, reaching for the woman without even thinking, hand stopping short of gently cupping her face. 

“You’re not the one I need absolution from,” Lucy whispered, then stepped into Lorena’s touch.

Like magnets, they snapped together. Lorena cradled Lucy’s neck, Lucy clung to the sides of Lorena’s blouse, and they kissed for the first time, and the last.

Lorena’s arm wrapped around Lucy’s waist and hauled her closer. They pushed and pulled until Lorena had her pressed up against the sink. Their fingers danced against each other’s bodies, searing everything into a memory only one of them would be allowed to keep.

“I don’t know what kind of person I will be to you, over there,” Lucy whispered against her. “But I couldn’t… cease to be… without…”

“I know,” Lorena whispered back, kissing her slowly this time, savoring it more. It filled her with warmth, which only cracked her apart, like an ice cold windshield suddenly hit full blast with heat.

“Whatever happens over there,” Lucy said against her lips, “just remember, you’ll allowed to be happy. You can’t give up on love.”

If only she knew the truth… but why burden Lucy’s soul when this version of her had so little time left?

Time travel had confused Lorena’s ideas about the soul. How much of its experiences from other timelines would it retain through overwrites? What about the souls of those whose very existence changed from timeline to timeline? What would happen to her soul over there, where she assumed it had passed on into heaven?

Who would be watching over Iris, if her soul was no longer there to do so? 

And who would watch over Iris after Lorena was dragged to hell for everything she has done?

“Flynn.” Lucy framed Lorena’s face, making her look at her. “You’ll save Iris, and you can be a mother again. Don’t give up on yourself.”

“You gave up on me,” Lorena replied bitterly, even as she clung to Lucy.

“And I will regret that, until the end.”

There were footfalls, someone walking past the door. It was a reminder that they only had this single moment, and barely that. 

“Come with me?” Lorena whispered, almost too ashamed to ask for something so selfish.

“I can’t.” Lucy was heartbroken, but firm. “I… I only exist to save you, and Amy.”

“Lucy—” 

“I’m at peace with this decision,” Lucy told her, wiping away Lorena’s tears with her thumbs. “People and opportunities, right?”

Lorena looked away, she didn’t think her heart could shatter any more than it already had, but it seems the universe always has a way of taking more. 

“I need to get back to Amy,” Lucy said as she started to pull away.

“Does… does Amy know?” Normally Lorena wouldn’t care, but it would make things awkward for Amy if she knew that both Flynn’s had fallen for their version of her sister.

“No,” Lucy assured her. “She thinks my pain comes from Wyatt. That’s probably why she doesn’t like you.”

“I gave him plenty of warning, but, she’s right though,” Lorena let her arms drop and stood back. “I hurt her sister, just not in the way she thinks.”

“We hurt each other,” Lucy corrected her. “This timeline seems to be nothing but pain. Promise me you’ll find happiness over there.”

“You’ll never know if I do.”

“But you will.”

Lorena couldn’t respond to that. Would she tell the truth or lie? She couldn’t risk either. 

A sad smile on her face, Lucy left her alone in the bathroom. 

Turning to the mirror, Lorena reached into her pocket and retrieved an object. She placed it on the little ledge below the mirror. It glistened softly in the fluorescent lighting. 

Her wedding ring would mean nothing over there, except a constant reminder of what she lost. The Garcia she was about to meet, she had no doubt he was a good man, but he wasn’t her husband, and she wasn’t his wife. They weren’t bound together anymore. 

She should leave the ring, let it disappear when this timeline was erased. Its other self would be where it belonged, on the hand of the decaying flesh of that timeline’s Lorena, buried deep in the ground.

The universe had taken everything from her. Her daughter, her husband, and even her Lucy would be no more. 

Lucy… 

At least Garcia and Lucy will be happy together. Lorena could smile and bless their union, bury down deep her own pain. No sense in causing unnecessary drama. She always hated it when she had to deal with that kind of shit on a works projects. And she could hardly blame Garcia for falling in love with Lucy when she found herself doing the same.

No, the only thing Lorena had left now was saving Iris, and she wasn’t going to muck up the opportunity given to her.

She would save Iris.

Whatever it takes.

/end

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just want to say thank you to all my readers. This story started out as two stories that wanted to be told together. Then it grew from half the size it was supposed to be. 
> 
> For those worried about Iris, yes, she does get saved, but that is another story on its own. It involves both her being saved, and the resulting trials of attempting to give her the best life possible. Perhaps I will write it one day, it really depends on the muse.


End file.
